A Flying Dog and the Little Captain

Everything in the world looked like something else today.  Water looked like melted silver.  The early morning sky looked like hammered metal.  Spraying crests of waves looked like a cloud of diamonds thrown to the wind.  Mushrooms looked like the knees of the devil pushing up through the sod. A leaping dog looked like Hermes with a red, flying tongue. 

I slipped through the bewitching world with many sideward glances. 

Then I thought about: 

A little boy riding astride the hip of his father, a small and tender captain on the prow of his ship, figurehead of a kingdom to come.  The silky strands of his blond hair lifted and settled on the light air.  One arm rested lightly, righting him as his ship swayed, and he looked ahead to the horizon, brow furrowed and mouth pursed.  It was serious business, but his balance was good and his eyes keen.  The boy and the man moved forward, linked at the arms, in quiet command of their business, out together in the city. 

A slow turning ballet of clouds swirled a thousand or two feet above me in the winter sky.  Gracefully, slowly twisting and tumbling softly through space and time, they moved on and on and on.  The boy riding, the clouds slowly spinning, the water glimmering silver in the distance, and a jumping dog who launched his body in an ecstatic salute to weightlessness:  Joy, limitless joy.  And love. 

Love is the source of my imaginings, fear the source of my inhibitions.  Gravity and dark heaviness counterbalanced each and every thing I saw today, every movement, every little breath.  I left the darkness where it lay and saw beauty and tenderness and a flying dog above a wet breadth of sand.  I chose love.