prose sketch: out the bedroom window

Tue 27 Nov 2012 1:20 p.m. my bedroom

The sun is right above the neighbors’ chimney, a brilliant nuclear egg shining through the layers of cotton-batting cloud. There is a mildness to it, a neutrality. I think of decks of cloud over shaded coastal sea, no wind and no rain, yet. Dark rags of cloud swaddle the sun now, closing its incandescent eye. Slow hands suffocate it, but not quite: it burns through again, a blazing little thing.

Yes: something marine, wide, ceilinglike about this cloud-deck. Over the featureless sawtooth city the air is pink apricot, creating a crepuscular winter feeling, a red-shifted day that never became fully alive, the city air a cool glowing aspic of its own smoke. A quiet day, saying, “if only, if only . . .”