December 30th, 2014

What is true of sunrise in winter over the ocean is that the sky is light long
before the sun is born.  As I watch it crowning slowly, and then quickly rising
between two clouds, it is no longer light that is emitted, but fire, and somehow,
in those moments, everything seems darker because the sun itself has appeared
and is so light  the sky, which seemed fully illuminated before, is the color
of a glass of milk into which pieces of ice have melted. Yesterday I sat for a long
time and collected many pieces of beauty and hung them around the living room
so when the low winter sun shone in they would become illuminated. The dust
in mid afternoon light when I was 8, the choreography of a fly, a bird, a plane, all
ticking in time to Sigur Ros in a golden field behind a tobacco barn when I was 20,
the warm summer rain falling into a gray ocean at low tide, all things silver, when
I was 23, and then yesterday, the way it seemed as if the sun itself made ripples
in the sea, every angled wave a precious metal, shimmer before me like standards. 
These are the moments that represent a life. Keep this poem if I leave first.