earth&sky

When I happened to glance up from my book this morning as I rode the metro to work, I did a double-take. Behind the buildings and the blue shadowy ground, luminous purple and pink hues shaded the sky. As the buildings fell back leaving the horizon in view, riotous shades of orange and yellow curled in thin wispy clouds performing morning stretches above the awakening world. One would expect such a panoply of brilliant colors exploding on the scene to cause shock and awe down on the wintery earth. But the effect was more subtle, although just as intense. This sunrise resucitated in the soul a small hibernating hope of existence beyond this frozen world, untouched by darkness and cold. It is as if the explosion, rather than taking place in the sky, occured inside me--pushing away, filling and shattering anything tied to the solid winter earth, and leaving only the curious sensation that what is most real and desirable is, in fact, exquisitely beautiful and intangible.