A Shift in Light

Light is a fickle beast. It comes and goes with the movement of time, of earth, of clouds. You can wake up knowing weather by light itself. Sometimes light nudges you gently. "Get up." It whispers. "Go. Look." And what you see is a world of quilt batting, gently rolling filament over rock and twig and road. In the summer light is harsh, a beating from Apollo, a raining warmth that can grow a garden and set sensitive skin aflame. Spring light is muddled through storm clouds. It casts a green glow over the windowsill and flaps with the shifts in cloud and leaf. Autumn light, o fleeting! It's sometimes orange and sometimes yellow and sometimes the color of fog. Autumn light moves, creeps over the back of your couch and BAM hits you in the eyes. Autumn light differs by day, by moment. It can come through the bedroom window today, enter by living room tomorrow. I love the way light shifts from one season to the next. Autumn light is the most interesting. This morning it peeped from behind a cloud and hit the orange throw, setting it on fire. Yesterday it lit the bedroom in a symphony of white showing every errant strand of cat hair. Tomorrow it may yet dapple the walls and split open the blinds; one never really knows in autumn. My favorite light is the light of winter. It's crisp, cold, blue-tinged weathering that fingers you with icy awareness. Fleeting as it is in the South, winter light sings of snowfall and I have memories of precious mornings as a child when by the light alone I woke and KNEW it had snowed during the night. Today I am thankful for the light that illuminates our tiny cottage. It shows the dust and cat hair, reminds me where to clean. It angles (angels?) around my books and collections reminding me of the blessings of lovely little things. I am thankful for the light of words that shifts with the reader, diffusing the soul into a thousand wings of thought. I am thankful for the light of others as it shows me where I falter and where, on the rare occasion, I shine.

Happy Monday, Dears!