2 posts tagged “sun”
They were waiting. Their shapes were wilting; the fine edges becoming dim and unfocused, like aged eyes. Their chlorophyll was running thin through a green cartography that was drying into faded rivers. The palm print of Summer pressed with an alchemist's anticipation - but the leaves, the waiting leaves, fought the heated transformation.
The triumph of Spring was over. Their birth had finished, when they had emerged in verdant curls from stems thick with the muscular promise of a growing season. Their green scent had been dainty and cool; Persephone's fragrance heralding her return from black obscurity.
But now the sun had run rampant across the sky; his heat turning the blue eternity into a blank wilderness. The leaves curdled during the fierce day; their fatigue betraying their internal botany.
So they were waiting.
They were waiting for the season of harvests; for the smell of horses waiting in the yellow fields, shivering under a rising equinox: they were waiting for the sunsets to burst in their veins, so they could fall once more into the darkness.
I take whatever chance I can to look into the sky and observe what mischief goes on there. Recently I saw an example of waywardness that could only be described as shocking.
That particular day, the sun was frosted and white. In an act of sheer lunacy, he was trying to disguise himself as the moon, his cold, glittering rival. He had discarded his burnished glow and in a fit of pique had denied the earth his radiance. He didn't feel like setting in a bath of colors - no. He was tired of his dreary afternoons, hanging alone in an empty blue arc; or of having his golden face swathed in capricious clouds, ready to take flight at the merest tickle of wind.
He envied the moon so many things - her starry handmaidens, arrayed around her like a crown floating in the sky; her opaque glow, her cool grace of pearls. He had grown weary of his heat, and the sweat on his brow. The people, so far below, would never look at him, and it was depressing. He wished he could change shapes, become a half, a quarter, a crescent...crescents which were carved out of gems and worn in ladies' hair, crescents which were embroidered into Diana's cloak as she hunted across the sky of shadows.
The sun was jealous. He wanted the moon's authority - she controlled the tides, the oceans of the world. She could catch the waves in her illuminated net and pull them onto shore; or she could demand that the water be patient and wait for her call. The moon had the feminine audacity to cross the path between sun and earth; so he would merely flare in futility around her eclipsing edges. She even exerted a strange power over human women every month.
The moon cascaded across the sky. She paraded in a shining orbit, bowing in front of a black curtain made bright by galaxies, planets and stars. The sun felt immobile and foolish, wavering slightly on his axis, condemned to be an undefined and stationary glare.
So on that day, the sun decided to make the bold move and steal the moon's pale robes, hoping that no one would notice. I did.
