arc of light

Inform, tell, and remind yourself: March is around the corner. The temperature tide will turn. The trajectory projects warmth. More light. It is given. The arc of light shall not be denied. This polar grip will loosen. Believe it.

Lights Alive

Entering Burnet Park, at the top of Syracuse's Tipperary Hill, I noticed the presence of absence.

Missing were the strings of festive amberish-whitish lights draping several mature trees. More accurately, on closer inspection, many of these strings of lights remained on the trees but were unplugged, unlit. To paraphrase Hemingway, a clean, unlighted place. Darker, moodier in the night wind.

Higher up the winding drive, gone was the banner of lights, high up between two tall trees, announcing HAPPY HOLIDAYS, demurely (or cowardly) declining to declare exactly which holidays, as if the secular gods would gripe about the explicit nomenclature of the God-incarnate In Nomine Patris feast.

Some lights still shone.

Within the gates of the pool, an image of a toy train illuminated the space between two lifeguard stations, tall seats, sentinels overlooking a white and snowless empty pool, bereft of the excited jeering and obscenity and glee (mostly in Spanish) of its frolicking residents.

Back near the zoo, some trees or streetlights had, what?, snowmen or holly or candy canes brightly shining.

Sirens in the distance got the coyotes or wolves stirred up at the zoo, singing their own eerie siren songs.

In the distance, downtown, the Niagara Mohawk building (I'll never call it the NationalGrid building) and M&T Bank were wrapped in lights of green.

Spotting a skateboarder, with shorts on, passing me, I circled back to monitor him, wondering if that was a spray can in his hand.

Did he paint the now-gone LIFE graffito?

The echoes of his skateboard antics forced me to conclude, no, for now, he was too busy just skating along, skimming the surface, riding the landward wave.

A Sentence of Enlightenment

Walking the dog in the too-early night, not being accustomed to this artificial invitation to one hour less of evening light, I am buffeted by whirling winds while simultaneously amused by Maggie's chasing of a wind-driven leaf here and then there, as if it were an escaping prey, and then dazzled by the surprising array of whitish-yellow lights draping two maples at the crest of the hill in the park overlooking the city, awaiting the advent of a feast of light on the darkest night.

When in Doubt. . .

When in doubt, haiku (or punt if you're 4th and 17).


To wit:

Dusky light splashing

September's well-dressed branches

Squirrels stocking up

Pruning green hedges

Fresh-cut timber aroma

Dead vole in the grass

Shadows of sunset

Fall on Hopperesque buildings

Missing May's finches