Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Morning Words for 10/08/14

   10/08/14:  A night’s sleep taken in two doses, with an break in the middle, an island of intentional consciousness to rise and wander out to the back yard at 3am, the highway hum no quieter than in mid day, to watch as the full blood moon becomes overtaken by the Earth’s shadow, subdued red light sliding across it’s face until the whole spherical rock blocked in dark red with a halo around it’s outer edges. 
   Somewhere in the second dose of rest a dream.   A finely dressed man in white with white bolo hat has come to talk with Nathan.  The man is a social worker advocate for activists.  I point out where Nathan is and the man looks up behind where we stand.  Up on a window washer’s scaffolding with two or three others, I think two, suspended fifty feet above the earth by wires from a crane, hanging there in active protest against something, an air-sit-in. Nathan’s voice comes down all friendly and welcoming.  The man in white looks on, knowing that this will be another one of many climbing jobs, a part of his work he has become resigned to.  The other two in the scaffolding rearrange squares of wood to make a platform in the floor-less scaffolding where they could stretch out to sleep as it is night time after all.  
   The morning sky was filled with fire islands in a Crater Lake blue sky.  It was a sight to behold as I stood with naked feet on the cold concrete walkway between the door and the sidewalk, hoping to catch a final glimpse of the partial full moon before it dipped west into Japanese skies.  But she was already gone and so that was that.  Instead I settled for the amazement as the first fiery rays of dawn lit the sky ablaze.  I tried to draw the colors in, so vivid if you tried to paint them they would be written off as unreal.   A photograph would be suspected of tampering.  But underneath the dramatic tapestry there was no doubt that it was the real dawn sky, trying to compete with the full moon eclipse that had preceded it.