LIGHT and DARK

LIGHT

Dark of Night becomes blind as light of the Sun pokes over the horizon at Dawn. High Summer over a blanched desert landscape, light is not welcome, its intensity heralding another day of unremitting baking. The traveler’s eyes and soul wince as one to this glare of pure white backed by the stark blue of sky. Foul light despair reflects off every small rock, grain of sand and bleached soil.

The few desert plants are blackened, time scorched and leafless, waiting until uncertain rains for the light of life. For how long? Too long. For now at least they are impregnable to light and dark. Dark of a rock crevice is welcome to the desert lizards. Dark of shadow shelter is craved by the wincing traveler. No need to wonder that the brain is so maddened by the harsh light, that eyes are driven to savage awe at this glaring whiteness of this forever nothing landscape. Thought cannot be, no time to ponder as the intensity of day overwhelms.

End of day, creeping blood red of a diving Sun takes over the lightscape. Trickle of dark turns into flood. The traveler revels in this change, a rushing embrace of relief from the naked light of day and anticipatory lust of the coolness it brings. From the enveloping dark, light comes again like pin head light burst of a star here, a second one there. Within minutes the light is a pinprick blaze across the Universal dark matter.

Eyes and soul no longer wincing but replenished in the wonder of its Universal light glow.

DARK

Depths of Winter, dark clings on like drizzle to the light of day, never to be fully diminished by the insipid strength of the Sun’s light. This is where Grey grows at ground through to Zenith. No horizon as sky merges to the place in front of the face. Not superficial, but gnaws its dark way to the soul. To smile- impossible, to visualise wonderful things – cannot, a tragedy in itself. Ghosts of winters past visible in the depressed corners of the soul.

Wait, that anemic orange ball in the sky struggles through at last, smudge of brightness here, a glimmer there, a full burst of dazzling white as the dark is pushed aside from the breaking fog of day. Briefly the glimmer that promises more, the wonder of lightness.

Dark is gone, for now at least, a brilliant blue sky painted over the grey below. It is there, a smile is born once more, the head is upwards, shoulders back purposefully striding towards the too early Winter sunset.

So soon this lightness is challenged by the winter rush of night and predictable dark. Chill sets in both of temperature and soul. Light is gone. But what is this? A pin head light burst spontaneous all above, and more exploding to light the way in awesome splendor reassuring the eyes and soul of the light within and without us all. Marveling gaze above, a smile now rests, not to be twisted down by the dark that surrounds.

Summer, Winter light abounds in many forms. Dark can threaten to engulf and take root at any time, or so it thinks. Accept the darkness for what it is as light will surely follow in its many forms. We just need to look within and without, look up and around. Dread of the dark cannot last. Light will always be found.