Eve of All Saints, 2005

....Sarah and I spent some time wandering in the dark, stargazing. We could see the Milky Way spanning the zenith like a dusty arroyo - the dust being the faintest light - and the other stars seemed to swarm at us, offering us a semblance of eternity, unveiling a place with neither day nor night, north nor south. Distances wherein light is slower than time. A sea so deep that the light of a raging sun will freeze in the offing and wash up here as this frostdire were-light, shuddering, not really illuminating anything. It made me want to bless the dim scarf of light overhead that now seemed like a mother's arm, holding us back from a still greater darkness. And then again, there is nothing fearful in the stars with their eyebeams of Chartres-blue cathedral light, when you remember that the whole universe lies like a little hazelnut in Christ's hand.

evening in early November

Today at sunset everything changed. A Helen-head of cloud rose from the sun, lavender linen, sun-sewn edges, brighter breath of light dispersed through lower part from molten saffron sun. Turn around and face the tree with light full on its crown, red leaves transfigured into something antique seeming, a rusted filigree on a gate to some older Old World where a half-remembered tongue returns at evening in that lost land. And then standing dizzy by the fountain round, behold the light tilted against trees and merging with the autumn mountain where summer sheds its blood and makes an even of its own - yet not harshly, with a rosehip redness and fume of fire that is yet gentle.