iridium | just one small moment

i'm at home, typing with tea and toast in front of the big windows, and outside everything is soaking in a deep rose light. the holly-berries, the red motorbike, the fallen petals of the little tree-shaped camellia across the street, they all glow like props on a theater stage. and the bare tips of the treebranches are a deep and almost violent red, catching this light on all their intricate rainwet surfaces.

the sunset is behind me, behind the house and the long rows of streets, the streetlights just starting to fire up, behind the huge graceful crane-giraffes in the port of Oakland, each one lit up with its own brilliant constellation and surrounded by the deep yellow flashes of sodium-lights. and the sunset is even farther than that, beyond the bay and the hills of the city, travelling on across the western ocean.

and in front of me is the rainstorm that came down through the hills this afternoon, brushing aside the bright mid-afternoon in-between-the-showers sunshine and laying down a thorough slant of grey rain. the deep grey is shading to blues now, with the sun fading, and only the very tips of that one tree are catching the last bit of sideways rose light.