Sun Dogs Above

Driving into work points directly into the sun, often at the time when the rays dance little jigs on the back of my retina.  Because the daylight is lengthening, the sun is now higher in the sky at the same hour and less of a blinding concern.  Fiddling with the left turning signal which had started a frantic blink at the last corner distracted me from looking up, because sometimes if you wiggle something, it works again.  Example: my defroster that started all by itself after six weeks of no output.  No luck with the turn signal, I just have to call this really great mechanic who works his own hours he is that good.

By this time I had turned onto the Kensington Expressway, a handy drive that had cut a beautiful neighborhood in half and eliminated the promenade that connected Humboldt with Delaware Park.  I remember the parkway, and at the end in front of the beautiful facade of the Museum there once was an orb that was labeled as the largest ball of coal in the world.  On a pedestal, with a plaque.  Wonder where they put that?  Remaining alone is the foot for the pedestal. If you go round to the west side of the Museum and scan the patch of lawn across the street, you can see the squarish bottom sadly missing the immensely peculiar black ball, which had looked as if the gods had dropped a giant punctuative period onto a cement stand.  Rolled off of some giant astral scroll.  There has to be a picture of it somewhere.

After merging with not so friendly traffic contrived of people that I am sure are perfectly nice once they are not behind a wheel, there was a vision in the sky, a rainbow?  The colors were there, leading from inner red through orange yellow greenish blue purple as a blotch, a slice of rainbow directly horizontal to the sun.  A duplicate icon balanced the other side of our solar star, smaller and not as brilliant in color or intensity.  You could have run your finger in a halo around the sun, linking the two prismatic segments of morning air.  How can you drive at 55 mph and remark on the atmosphere?  Not well.  Once I got to the parking lot the effect was beginning to fade as the sun ascended towards zenith, and the colors had washed to pale ghosts of the spectrum.  It was meant to be fleeting, you take what you can get and say thank you.

Parahelia are also called sun dogs, companions who wait at each side of the sun.  Composed of hexagonal ice crystals, they filter the light and break it apart into colored apparitions low in the sky.  I have seen them more at sun's set than in the morning, but they can appear at any time of any season.  Under the right conditions you will observe them hanging about the moon, paraselenae.  Living far into the city as I do, there isn't much of the night sky that isn't filled with buildings and orange street lamps.  I miss the stars and other astronomical doings, and so a sun dog offered in post dawn hours aligns me back with Sagittarius, Jupiter, cumulous, Antares, and Tycho Brahe.  The push and pull of tides, the breathing of the earth's crust.

The setting sun is bouncing yellow off the taller edifices of economics and commerce found downtown, they will soon glow apricot to rose to last violet.   Clouds pass above, forecasting rain for the next day.  In the meantime, the newly revived birds flutter towards evening roosts, and leaves of the house plants fold closer to stem in preparation for the coming dark.  The cats are arching eyebrows as this is the time they are most active, just before and after sun; not nocturnal, these folks are crepuscular.  Nothing like an early morning crash of china to get you out of bed.  Me, I am tired.

Come then, with a cup of tea or cocoa and sit while the sun descends and goes to count the hours on the other side of the world.  Let those people wake for a while and toil with the day, god bless them.  Night is here, and so is a book, a pillow, go latch the door, outen the lights.  Sleep and be safe, cats call, children sigh; human hearts, sun dogs laugh.