The Squall

      It was a gray sky, then dark and darker as the squall line approached my small river valley. It spilled over a distant ridge with flashes of light and the echoes of thunder. The wind and rain started intermittently and slowly increased in intensity.

      The cherry blossoms outside my window felt the rain first. Each blossom bounced and shook as raindrops hit them from above. The rain pounced. Each blossom was becoming a pink faucet in a surreal painting from Dali.

      Within a few minutes, it ended. The sun popped underneath the passing clouds. Golden light sparkled through the diamond drops that lingered on the leaves and grasses. Each drop, a value of several karats of refracted light; a Tiffany of brilliance.

     It stayed for awhile; then cat-like dusk stalked across the sky. It was like opening a decorated and colorfully wrapped package to see a dull brown box below.

     Dusk is an apt name for the light of a settings sun. It could be called dimming, or waning or dulling, but dusk works as the light fades below the horizon.

     Finally a red sky-fire flare for a moment or two and then twilight to memory. Part of me wanted to rage against the dying of the light, as the poet suggested, but that’s another light for another time.

     This light will be back in just a few hours to start all over again and again.

     It’s truly a lesson of life if we choose to see it.