SILHOUETTES

Freewheeling down the mountain this morning into the gold of sunrise, which intensifies nearer the level of the Lake where the light thickens into some kind of mystical substance as it bounces off the water, I rounded the curve of the road behind the school, entered the stretch that leads down through the village and there, a couple hundred meters ahead of me, superimposed on that golden aura, were the silhouettes of two boys, one 9 or 10, the other 7 or 8, walking side by side in shorts, t-shirts and the bouncy mood of summer vacation, empty weeks ahead to be filled with whatever excitement kids can always come up with out of their newness, and even though the two were just silhouettes I could tell from the way they walked that they were brothers.

There's something in how the currents of emotion and strings of relation operate between little brothers out in the world; my suspicion was soon confirmed by the fact that the bigger boy, who was walking more intently and paying more attention to distant surroundings than the smaller one, right away heard my motor and turned to look, then cautioned his kid brother, who was just doodling along, to move more to the side of the road.

At that moment, in a mystical flash they became my brother and I walking into our own sunrise all those roads ago, relating to each other in just this way, he fooling around, I not as much, more cautious about traffic-- here was that road once more, but now on the other side of the world, two new boys walking down it just as it must be, every tomorrow before them...

In some distant morning may they too be privileged to see once more their summer sunrise when all that could be was met in one place, spelled in a moment of gold.