It's 9AM
Is there something wrong?
She caught me standing in the driveway and staring at the sky.
Last night.
Technically it was evening, but I took the trash out around seven and got gobsmacked.
Still too early for sunset, though it was shifting quick.
The clouds were what got me.
The looked fake, painted on a crystal blue canvas by a giant Bob Ross saying words like happy and mellow.
They stretched in lines from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see
Or my eyes at least, which admittedly do not see as far as they once did.
They were in straight lines like dabs off the end of a brush, just chop, chop, chop.
And covered the heavens.
The western end tinged pink with the sun slowly falling, and the eastern end over the lake looked like white pillows on a blue comforter.
There is a name when they are stretched like that, but I didn’t bother looking it up.
I stood in the driveway and stared up in wonder and joy.
Studying.
Praying, maybe.
Just a quick little burst of gratitude that I got to see something like it, not in a picture.
I could have taken a picture, but I was selfish.
I wanted the moment for me.
The ending of the day was cooler than it had been.
Arkansas weather is like that, the epitome of the expression, if you don’t like it, stick around a day.
From 90 to 70 faster than a car on the Interstate catching sight of blue lights swirling on the shoulder.
Whiplash fast.
We missed Spring a few weeks ago when the equinox happened on a frost filled morning and summer settled in hot and sticky.
Spring days would show up and disappear and come back again later, only to hang out for a morning or an hour and flit off.
Spring is fickle like that sometimes.
Until this week.
Maybe that’s what the clouds were, the formation of which heralded the coming of Second Spring, highs in the 70’s and 80’s, no humidity and frosty mornings.
Perfect baseball weather to partake in on a Saturday in the mountains.
Maybe this is one last hurrah before Memorial Day ushers in a wave of humidity that turns the state into a morass.
All speculative at this point because though those lying weather men and women are as good at speculation as any gypsy woman with a crystal ball, Spring and Summer have flighty minds and dance as they wish.
First one leading, then the other.
Long enough for an expression to be made about it.
An idiom turned fact, turned into conventional wisdom.
Like you know it’s raining if the rocks are wet.
A great day to get outside and play, but not to stay in and work.
How most of us spend most of our days.
Mindless of the wide world around us.
Until something happens to shake us awake and we look up.
Last night the sky was perfect.
And there was nothing wrong with that.
What was the last beautiful thing that made you stop and stare and almost took your breath away?
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Coming back from Vietnam on carrier deployment, I would always volunteer for midnight to 4 am flight deck watch. Only lights were the blue edge lights all the way around ship and the 63 on the tower. So black and a million stars. No air pollution no other lights. I'd hang out among our squadron helicopters. Walk leangth of deck. Good walk. 1969 wish I could do that today. Big Cat, Kitty Hawk, flight deck was 1,010 ft long 250 ft wide . I'd love to get out there one more time.
Love your posts, thanks.
The sight that made me stop and stare was when I was in the Navy. Out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. No land in sight and no city lights on the horizon. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. It was so dark. Unless I looked up. Trillions of stars! The milky way stretched from horizon to horizon. Suddenly, the ocean was filled with billions of glimmering ripples, caused by the ship's bow stirring up marine microbes. I have never seen anything so breathtaking. It is a memory I have cherished from my years in the military.