October 2, 2012

Yesterday on my way to school, the full moon was still up, riding the daylight like a ghostly chariot, the sun red and strong along a bank of low purple clouds.  With my new vision, I only see one moon, something of a loss <smile>, but that moon seen so clearly looks close enough to touch.  This morning the trees obscured it, but the early light rose like a breath of frost, turning the edges of the sky almost white.  It's beginning to feel like fall, cool mornings with the air a little less heavy for the moment.  The north wind has blown the tide out of the bay and you can see more of what is hidden on the soggy ground that is used to being covered by water.   There is a little breeze lifting the leaves, and a lot of sun streaking the trees.  A lovely morning . . .

Looking for the poem, I usually try to find something about what I see, but this morning I found one about the routine end of a working day, and nightfall.  However, the poem is anything but routine!

Ravenswood

Pigeons fold their wings and fade
into the gray facades of public places;
flags descend from banks, silk slips
floating to beds. Hips thrust

like those of lovers, as workers crank
through turnstiles, and waiting
for the Ravenswood express at stations
level with the sky, they shield their eyes

with newspapers against a dying radiance;
that lull between trains
when stratified fire is balanced

on a gleaming spire. Night doesn't fall,
but rather, all the disregarded shadows of a day
flock like blackbirds, and suddenly rise.

Stuart Dybek

You can see every detail in this poem and what you can't see your imagination supplies from the very particular words used to describe such an ordinary evening.  The idea of night not falling but rising is one I have had myself but not in such a wonderful lucid way, all the disregarded shadows of a day suddenly rising! Wow!  I really like that idea, not only does it give me a weird kind of deja vu of the concept, but a kind of spooky feeling that in all the daylight that I regard so highly, the shadows that naturally occur from such brightness are just waiting for their moment to rise up and make it dark.  A perfect idea for the month of Halloween . . .