Storm Coming

The ocean far and wide was cast in shades of silver, a reflected light that looked hollow and soft. Cirrus streaks spread a molten metal arch from heaven east and west, and bits of it dripped to boat masts and mooring lines in the harbor.  Circling gulls were silent, touched by glints and highlights, stilled in a quiet calm.

A shroud of shifting clouds held the light from the east until a string of flying geese stitched vapors and light, one to another.  The sun neither moved nor warmed anything but lit a fringe of breakers on the east-shore beach, miles of white plumes expanding and flattening in the distance, up and down the bay's edge.  Every wavelet, ripple, and swell held some shade of silver while painted vessels and wharves were bled of vivid color to become darker grays, shades and shadows.

The morning had reached its midpoint and there paused.  A nadir expressed itself, a hesitation between up and down, calm and storm, movement and stillness.  This was a moment of unfolding change between fair weather and storm, a drifting melancholy infused with filtered light.  It was as if the universe had finished exhalation and was ready to inhale deeply, begin its work again, renewed.

Perfection is ordinary in this light, so pervasive and unyielding in its quality that it goes nearly unnoticed.  Like a graceful dancer who floats above the floor in her soft movements, telling untruths about the seeming ease of movement, so a silver-hued sky caught mid stride in a change of weather mocks our sense of scope and time.

The geese beat restlessly in a ragged line, their black forms heralding a coming tide and turning moon.