Friday, November 27, 2009

North via South

On the road to Virginia the fog was thick in places, sometimes so thick it was hard to see cars ahead, in other places so thin the half moon appeared in the sky like a glowing bowl that had spilled its stars. Mostly the fog, illuminated by street lights, back lit the bare trees, setting the stage for something that seemed far more numinous than what the cement barricades and tire shrapnel by the side of the road promised.

At one moment the fog, illuminated like a cross section by the headlights of oncoming traffic cutting over a barricade, lit the marbled vapors above us so we could distinctly see all the beaded drapery of air currents enfolded in the cloud blanket that clung to the landfall past the bridge. For almost nothing at all it was freakishly something, the closest I've come to the Northern Lights while heading South across the Delaware, for a moment creating the illusion that I could observe the diaphanous currents included in the unincludable.

It reminded me of a dream I had a while ago; through the window of my house I saw a figure in the East, a Madonna made of clouds stretching from the firmament down to the Earth. When I saw her I left the house, kneeled crying on the stoop. I can't recall ever crying in my dreams before.

4 comments:

Robin Morrison said...

Crying in your dreams, when I do it, seems to mean that some deep meaning has thoroughly saturated my existence.

Lovely tropes, luv.

fulan: medieval measure of manure per acre allotment

Robin Morrison said...

"marbled vapors" wins my Obscurely Utile Phrase of the Month Award. It juxtaposes heft and buoyancy in a way that provides anchor for an entire paragraph's rooted spirits.

munre: payment for work never done

amarilla said...

"...some deep meaning has thoroughly saturated my existence." Wise words, as usual, thanks!

You should have seen it, the light made a cross section so you could see the various densities within the fog, organized by slight fluctuations in temperature, I image. It looked like an agate!

Robin Morrison said...

But, u c, I *did* see it. You quite nailed it. Oh, the aspiring novelist in me would compress and rework the frame in a way to concentrate the best if at the expense of some lovely second best, but I still saw it.

tomen: ramen noodles deep-fried into biscuit.