October light

The day opens warm and clear, another chance at summer. I walk to the dike where birch leaves glimmer more gold than the sun, the sky deep after rain, the river still. A fish mouth touches the surface. The water takes its stillness back like breath.

In the slow ease that spreads with the heat of the sun in my hair, I breathe deeply out of blue. Like the leaves, I absorb and shed the light until a lavender darkness rises from the river and covers me - the faint aurora left still warm into the night.

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society