DAILY PHOTO: Night Colors, Victoria Terminus – Mumbai
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Stepping out onto a city street in the cool, unclocked hours of the morning. One looks about, but not as one does in daylight -- i.e. in response to sound. Instead, one looks about in response to the lack of sound. A clawing sound from a burrowing rat isn't worth one's attention. It's the silence that calls upon the mind as to a sailor on shore leave.
dark beach night
the moon burns bright
over calm waters
Flipping open the tent flap, I see a vast and glowing night sky. It's not the shabby patch of light points of my sky at home. Here, high in the mountains, far from any city, I can make out bands of color and dazzling webs of luminosity. And I can feel the tininess that past men must have felt, a diminished sense of importance that's hard to come by for a human standing on the Earth, where flags are planted everywhere and grand monuments to our pomposity are packed into dense clusters. mountain sky. the cloudless night glows infinite
I saw a silhouette in the moonlight, a man who plodded snow that glowed moonlight. I was mesmerized by the vagabond -- a night-owl nomad moving by moonlight. What'd take me out into that night's cruel cold, seeing only what shone in the moonlight? A deadly urgent case must be afoot, a riddle solved solely in harsh moonlight. But maybe there's no beauty like the moon, and maybe no light flatters like moonlight. If so, the cold must be some puny stakes against the milky glow of brisk moonlight. And so I pull on boots and tug a hat to venture out amongst the pale moonlight. And seeing night as did that wanderer, I know the virtue life finds in moonlight.
I
a winter moon
is seen clearly between
breath fog plumes
II
starry skies,
through the tent flap,
herald cold’s bite
III
cold slinks in
once sleep has taken hold,
settling in bone
IV
winter midnight —
sunlight, a distant memory,
or so it feels
V
how bright the moon
in the mid-winter sky —
yet, no heat
Photos courtesy of my wife. Taken on August 29, 2019 in Las Vegas.