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Before the Storm
Apr. 3rd, 2015 11:36 pmThe full moon rose among thin clouds that presage the storm expected to arrive tomorrow night. It has not yet risen high enough to clear the tops of the pine trees, so the light is also filtered by branches and needles, as well as the new leaves of the oaks. The yard seems exotic and mysterious under that soft light, the familiar forms changed into what might be a garden from some other time in some other place. Only the smell of the cool night air is familiar.
The moment hangs between known and unknown, the way the moon hangs among the drifting clouds. Their ancient dust and vapor glows with the light that is always renewed, and I think suddenly of all the light that has fallen on their molecules over the eons, the light always fresh, the dust and vapor older and older. The dust of those clouds has been everything— rock and tree and flesh and fur, feather and scale, desert and garden— the vapor has been stream and pond, sea and snow, has flowed over rocks to wear them away and create the dust it will rejoin again and again in the sky, has crept slowly in glaciers and fallen swiftly as rain— which it will soon do again.
I wonder how much of the clouds I see has been part of me? How much of them drifted through space long ages until streaking to earth as meteors? How much of them were sand blown from the slowly decaying pyramids of Egypt? The clouds are growing thicker as I watch, and the few stars visible grow dimmer. Some of that dust reflected stars that no longer exist, and some of that dust may one day become part of other stars not yet born. My thoughts drift with the clouds that I once was and will be again. As does the moon, we reflect the ever-renewed light of the hidden sun.
The moment hangs between known and unknown, the way the moon hangs among the drifting clouds. Their ancient dust and vapor glows with the light that is always renewed, and I think suddenly of all the light that has fallen on their molecules over the eons, the light always fresh, the dust and vapor older and older. The dust of those clouds has been everything— rock and tree and flesh and fur, feather and scale, desert and garden— the vapor has been stream and pond, sea and snow, has flowed over rocks to wear them away and create the dust it will rejoin again and again in the sky, has crept slowly in glaciers and fallen swiftly as rain— which it will soon do again.
I wonder how much of the clouds I see has been part of me? How much of them drifted through space long ages until streaking to earth as meteors? How much of them were sand blown from the slowly decaying pyramids of Egypt? The clouds are growing thicker as I watch, and the few stars visible grow dimmer. Some of that dust reflected stars that no longer exist, and some of that dust may one day become part of other stars not yet born. My thoughts drift with the clouds that I once was and will be again. As does the moon, we reflect the ever-renewed light of the hidden sun.
