A gray morning. I turn on the tree lights early. I sit and work beside the fir.
At first it distracts me, so many ornaments have stories. And even the shape of the tree this year — a widened base, giving it a solid, grounded feel — draws my gaze.
But I strengthen my resolve. I will myself to see it only from the corner of an eye. To work beside it, to let its presence spur and not derail the day.
Less than a week until solstice; the light must come from inside.
Days grow short. Light grows scarce. It’s as good a time as any to add a lamp to a once-dark corner.
This arrangement won’t work when the kitchen table is fully occupied. But of course, it seldom is anymore.
With the lamp the table seems inhabited again. Warm, calm, illuminated and fully present. I’ve stopped being surprised by what light can do.
All morning long I’ve watched the leaves wag in the cool breeze, the light filter through the canopy to the deck and the French doors into the living room, where I work.
All morning long I’ve wanted to capture that light in word and image. Now that I’ve snapped the photo, I can’t think of anything to add.
It’s autumn, the rains have ended.
Light through leaves.
I walk when the time is right, when the writing and the chores are done. I don’t always consider the quality of the light.
Maybe I should.
Yesterday, Copper and I made our way through the woods as the sun slanted low through the oaks, glanced at their roots and spotlit the creek. The water shimmered in response, gave up its secrets, its depth, its hurry.
The light was a laser pointer teaching the landscape. Look here, it told me, here are sights you should not miss.
I drove to Kentucky yesterday — but left Virginia about six hours later than I usually do. The Blue Ridge were not the morning smudge on the horizon they usually are; they were full-bodied mountains rising in the west.
The little trail at the White Sulphur Springs rest stop had no trace of morning mist. It was shimmering in the midday sun.
And that last hour to Lexington was strangely peaceful, with darkness closing in fast.
All along the way I marveled at the road. I knew it was the same one, the map told me so. But the light said something different.
Walked downstairs Saturday morning to see a bar of light across the wall, and, only a few feet away, another one across the carpet. Not just an ordinary spot of brightness but a dotted bar of louvered light cast by the shutters at the front windows.
Maybe it was just because I wasn’t fully awake, but when I saw this I had to grab the camera and snap a shot. It seemed such a randomly beautiful way to start the day.
And today, when it’s cloudy and there is no sunshine to pour through the little top window of the front door and the half-shuttered windows of the living room, it’s randomly beautiful all over again.
There is so much we will do with it, this light. Porch sitting, weed pulling, trampoline bouncing, bike riding, hammock swinging, night walking.
There is so much we will dream in it. So many long evenings not quite in this world or the other but squarely between the two of them.
The map of our summer has not yet been drawn, or even the map of our spring.
But the late light is here. The rest can’t be far behind.
To read the newspapers you might think the main topic here in our nation’s capital is the sequester, but for me it’s the light.
The morning light that arrives ever earlier, putting me to shame (I should have gotten going earlier, I should be arriving at work in total darkness).
The morning light that sets the birds to trilling a special greeting at the Vienna Station. Their song sounds like something I remember from long ago.
The morning light that will later spill through my office window (much in need of cleaning), set the green plants to shining, and when the angle is right, make rainbows on the wall.
It’s lighter longer, but the sun still slouches low in the sky these January afternoons. So before it’s too late, I shoot winter shadows.
The posts, lattice work and vines make a delicate tracery on the siding. A monochrome reflection of an already color-stripped world.
Even the errant string of Christmas lights that dangles, unkempt, from the crossbeam looks elegant in reverse.
When the wind blows, the shadows wag in the fading light.
I checked my email and learned from the Writers Almanac that the autumnal equinox occurs today at 10:49 a.m. — only to glance at my computer clock and see … 10:49 a.m.
We are perfectly poised now between sunlight and shadow, between darkness and light, our days and nights equal halves of the same whole, like the beginning and end of a beloved book, each part integral to what we love, ultimately, for its completeness.
I write outside, a brisk wind blowing. As I type, a single leaf floats down and lands on my keyboard.
