THE DIME OF THE MOOD

Ah, ah, the first clear and temperate sunset in many months. I am out here near sunset admiring the finesse of the sky with that fine rare blue it can achieve at such times, like the robins use for their eggs, the crafty avians. And just that tinge of rose, that drives painters wild trying to replicate with brushes and pigments on canvas, with a only hint of that same rose, cast like a sheer veil of light over the dark rocky shoulders of the foothills in their ancient compromise with the pale blue lake...

The simple offhand mastery of it is astounding at every glance, on every side... The dark green spikes of trees, the rose tint-- how it roils at the edges of the mountains even where they turn to rosy snow...

And the islands out there, with their pale golden stripes of residence along the lower edges... No boats today though, for, splendid as it might be for sailing in the moment, the weather at this time of year can turn on the dime of the mood of those now pink clouds...

The tension is delight to the soul.

Mountain sunset -
birds move down the wire
remain in light

Two egrets trace
the soaring calligraphy
of sunset

DAY'S END

Here at the end of day, wide lake the precise color of a blue chalcedony ring my brother made long ago in another world, one last sweep of sunlight streams through the notch in these mountains for a few intense moments, lighting the stairways of young rice paddies stepping down the mountain, filling my eyes with more than vision, lighting a glimpse of the font of beauty as bright as the final bloom of a dying ember, but of life being born-- in moments, a picture of faith in purpose, all the way to sunset...