“Neither had my secret thought conceived the snowflake, nor in all my music was contained the falling of the rain.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Silmarillion” (1977)
One ridge of phosphorescent glass, electric with sunlight. At another angle the breeze-raked surface applauds, dappled with buoyant reflective motes; sparks struck off the forge of creation, an alloyed sheen like chrome, and the diamond dust pyrotechnics of powdered snow.
I am no Young Werther. I sit at 31 and still perceive this beauty as a recompense of despair instead of the garnish to it, instead of as some grand mockery from a sensory platitude.
How is there still more to notice about light on water? Cloud shadows throw that subtle motion into a mirage haze, where the same sinuous pleats float now half in ochre and half in azure. This is yin and yang. And when one errant gust of mountain air impels, momentarily, a column of this pond-glint troop at double time, what is in that instant of frenetic dazzle but song? Parade march. Or the braille of a music box cylinder rolling, played out across the very elements of wind and water. And I too breathe in that melody.
It is good to be human. I am grateful to God or the Universe to be so, under the chiaroscuro of heaven’s balcony, these midday cumulus. They stretch, as I do. Diaphanous. Curling outward, flexing those mutually intangible forms.
I cannot touch you. But I feel you.
September 6th, 2020
Hermit Thrush 