After the Storm

The spire for Erie Community College is currently topped with a flame of rainbow cast from the dress hem tatters of passing storms. It is seven in the evening, with sunset imminent in a sky fading to the translucent purple of dreams, the light still filtering its way through horizontal promenades between city buildings and through the tiny remnants of glassine floating in the atmosphere. After rainfall, after mist, departing cloudlets shake off those last drops which act as prisms

Two pillars of rainbow color appear as the droplets break lingering rays into myth, the larger, inner piece just landing above the gargoyled steeple as if it were lit by a fantastic, gaseous mirage. It hangs there, shifting as the sun settles under earth's edge and into the wilds of the zodiac, for at night our sun becomes part of some constellation imagined through the magnifying lens of dissimilar galaxies. Sunset is a see you later, do we know what our yellow star does when we aren't looking? You think the sun is visiting China as we sleep, but out in space it has another name from another set of eyes and perhaps assumes the shoulder point position in the celestial image of some alien babe. We may even be a nipple. Eek.

As the sun goes on to other things, the pillar of rainbow blanches to a little ghost which floats away as light ends and colors shift; only a dim miasma blinks with a last glimmer of hallucination in fading spectrum. Then sunset, dusk, twilight, and black; then begin changing back around three thirty in the morning when the darkest part of the sky somehow changes to a navy blue and so on. Anyone who has driven through the night recognizes the change of the clock without a dial.

Dawn is usually accompanied by yelling birds and any night critters scuttering for their burrows and nests. Just before the grand entrance by Sol, and if you are driving through civilized people, coffee smells emerge along with toast, egg, grits, and bacon aromas that make the steering wheel turn into a giant pancake and usually the car needs gas, too. So, stop already. Make everyone happy. Go comb your hair and splash your face awake. And besides, eggs are good for you.

The small, meditative rainbow has evaporated, the rain has sluiced into gutters and drains, gardens and pools filled with calico fish, puddles for sparrows, crevices of leaves for the tiniest to sip, and into creek, stream, river, and lake. It is a rainwashed evening, the cooling air of night cleansed by drops hurling through troposphere to ground.

We humans appreciate the cooler air, and flop ourselves down to sleep without the constant whirr of a fan or air conditioner droning its propellor mantra. Quiet, after our day of noise and conflict, we would like a dose of quiet, please. A night cool enough to use a blanket so that we feel protected lends to this hypnotic recipe for a simple, deep sleep with dreams of meadows, roads, or flowing currents.

Turn the key, close the door, climb under, fall in, lights out. Good, clear night.