Damp

[rejectomorph]

I found a vase to hold the lilacs I cut from the branch which the bush lost to yesterday's storm. They bring an elusive fragrance as pale and subtle as their color. Though their afterlife will be brief, their presence cheers the room. The corner of my eye sometimes sees them as a small cloud, and I half expect to see them drift as did the actual clouds which turned afternoon gray. I think it is the softening of colors which gives spring's gray afternoons their romantic quality. Winter gray is sombre with green and brown, but spring's varied pallet, so vibrant in sunlight, lends to a muted day some of its energy, gentling itself in the process. All afternoon the filtered light made the landscape seem antique, like a faded print of a Victorian garden where women in voluminous pastel dresses wandered, distracted and vague, daydreaming. It makes no sense, I know, but that is the image the day brought to my mind.

Tonight, there is mist, and the clouds glow with the light of the moon they conceal. They are like lavish theater curtains, about to open on some spectacle, some grand entertainment for which only the most splendid hall is fit. The mist-dusted forest night is perfect, vast and expectant, hushed, thronged with dark forms waiting for the sky to open and shower them with starlight.