Taking the Moment

 

Photo by Eugene Mykulyak on Unsplash

Autumn Equinox apparently.

Yesterday the phrase kept being spouted on the radio, on the television and smiling journalists seemed to think it was laden with special meaning for everyone. Magical. Mystical. Certainly a mystery why they kept repeating it over and over.

I’ve felt the light lowering and clawing back its golds and ambers to throw somewhere else far away on the other side of the planet. As it pulls back, the elements around me seem to be reaching for just one more moment of comfort; the bricks in the garden walls glow and mottled charcoal shadows of leaves and branches paint themselves on the canvas of red, brown and creams.

 A ring-collar dove lands with a noisy flutter and dances along the top of this terracotta stage. A little beige two note Fred Astaire with his eye on the acid red berries of the Rowan Tree that is showing off its fruit in the early morning glow. Will Fred never learn a third note?

I'm standing still, locked down by the stillness of the air. No sway of bamboo or shudder of Silver Birch leaves but the light is constantly floating, shimmering. I’m fascinated by the colours and how they can be changing, fluctuating even as my eyes struggles to focus on them. The russet bricks, the nutmeg bark, the last burst of pinks, purples and yellows from stubborn and magnificent chrysanthemums, begonias and marigolds. One last final push before the big sleep.

And then the sudden dazzle of illuminated stained glass; diamonds and circles of steely turquoise, lavender sage greens and primrose yellows... the colours unable to fix as the glass seems to play with the light enjoying the promising tickle of new tints and glows.

And then the sky, bright and demanding. Clear and translucent itself like a sheet of blue glass spread above the chapel rooftop and the trees in the distance over my shoulder. The turmeric yellow of a neighbour’s Acacia tree splashes across the sky, laughing with stubborn determination to fight the blue.

And then a feint buzz, a feint twang in the air. Between our house and the chapel a telephone wire vibrates, buzzing like a plucked guitar string. A small group of starlings are gathered, huddled together along the wire bouncing with their tapping and clucking. Sending out a Morse code perhaps. “Come on you lot, it’s time to go”.

Into the blue - no that heads north and to the cold. Surely they’ll head into the green white of the light behind the house, fly closer to the silvery sun and the promise of warmth somewhere else...

 Autumn Equinox.

 Moving on.

Colin Stevens