Cloudy Night

A cloudscape, intermittently moonlit, distracted me from ordinary earth. Wreaths of light were hung on rumpled puffs of dust miles wide, roiling in slow motion, a silent, unscented fire, bright only by contrast with the dark land. The unstirred trees were silent, too, though distance whispered of winds that flowed down the canyons, brushing the freshened streams. Last evening, the lowest clouds were boiling from those now-invisible clefts like pale steam. Strange, how light transforms chill vapors to suggestions of heat, and yet the damp that covers the pavements it makes look colder, like ice that glows from below. Those few moments when the clouds parted and revealed the moon, the earth was frozen in its light. The light now is pale, as the waxing moon sets, the clouds regathered to obscure it, only a few thin spots in the overcast glowing with a faint blue tint. Where the pines rise to displace the sky, fragments of light penetrate their dark mass and reveal small images of twisted branches hung with clumps of needles. They are like runes which scribe an invitation to pass toward that light. The distance they reveal seems greater than the distance of the hidden stars.

Clearing

The rising moon finds a clear sky. A few stars manage to compete, but lunar brightness leaves most of them washed out. Chill air discourages the frogs, and they do not sing. A few more days and they'll return. For now, the only sound is the hollow hum of passing cars, the rush of their tires on drying pavement so like the sound of distant surf that the beach is conjured to my mind.

I woke late again, despite the bright sunlight. My head feels stuffy again, too. I'd thought that the rains would have washed away all the pollen, but apparently they have not.

Another piece of the computer has arrived, but is useless without the parts that are somewhere in the limbo of the delivery system. Commerce dribbles. It is incontinent.