Morning

I only properly appreciate the daylight when I've stayed up for the whole night and seen the sky gradually lighten. Even though I do not feel the black of night as a weight, its solidity outside the window is formiddable.

Night was black, like a stain. Inky darkness: for all I knew, the world might have melted and darkened into nothing while I was sitting here at my desk. . . But at some moment, the sky changed--not all of a piece, not to blue, but quietly, to not-quite-black. It wasn't light per se, but diluted darkness.

And then each time I looked back, the sky had flashed to a clearer color. The trees struggled into being, one leaf at a time. The dark faded, like water slowly evaporating. Nothing changed inside--J. was still sleeping, I was still typing, typing, typing. K. was still keeping me company. But the light that seemed so distant at first silently filtered into the room, and its arrival seemed not to add a presence but to create largeness, generosity, amplitude. Space and time blossomed before me.

Finally, I went to sleep, freed by the light.

Post #101 == Poem

[This poem could probably use some more editing, especially because I was too lazy to mess with the indenting in html. But I like it anyway.]

Golden

Shadows pattern the wall as I write to you
The light from the setting sun is golden
filtered through the leaves (the maple's stars,
the lines and angles from the pine)

On the other side of the glass, the breeze
stirs the pine, the maple, all the leaves
(Their shadows dance on my gilded wall)
The light is the color of honey, of amber,
of summer, of a long and tender silence.

The sun sinks toward the horizon
(like a child sinking into sleep)
It does not blaze through the leaves
anymore, but the light still glows gold.
I would not trade that color

for anything. I need its warmth when
my heart shivers in the cold breeze
that shakes the leaves. (I do not know
how the wind gets through my ribs
to chill my heart. But it does.)

No one around me seems to mind the cold
Maybe they do not feel it, walking arm in arm
Beside them, I walk, and I know all their names,
and we all talk, but: we never touch
(I never tell them I am cold.) I watch

the sun setting in a pale sky, as the trees
darken, and the star and needle shadows
bristle together, choking out the light space:
and the pattern vanishes. I blink, and only
an afterglow remains, staining the white wall

to yellow, to cream, then to the ancient hue
of ivory, of an elephant's tooth, broken,
lying cold on the silent soil.

Jellyfish

Thirsty at the end of the day, I poured water into my mug. It is solid ceramic, mottled like an oyster shell outside and inside. Its weight in my hands was reassuring. I drank. The water tasted mildly of tea.

When I looked into the water a few minutes later, I saw what seemed to be a small white jellyfish at the bottom of the cup. Its milky membrane wavered in the water. Its tattered edges fanned upward, as though it were swimming, but if it was swimming, it was trying to go down through the bottom of the mug. What was this sea creature doing in my cup?

The moonjelly was actually an incarnation of the soy milk I failed to wash out of my mug this morning. The day dried it to a skin, and the water softened it and loosened it from the ceramic, till it swam free.

I stopped drinking, but the jellyfish continued evolving and dissolving. It is trying to become a cloud of milkiness. It does not wish to be solid.