Well, that's what I get for relying on the sun to tell me what time of day it is. It's probably not good to be so attached to the natural world when clockworks have long since pushed the world's ancient rhythms into the background. My elementary school classrooms each had a clock with "Regulator" printed on it. Each minute of the school day would start with a click as the hand jumped one of the sixty tiny gaps that ringed the clock's face. How did I fail to heed the warning in that name, punctuated as it was by those clicks?
But, yes, a bright afternoon drew me into a state of lassitude, singularly inappropriate to the season. Being even more distracted than usual, I might have imagined spring already here, had it not been for the chilly air, and the bareness of the trees. The chill continues tonight, as does brightness, the moon now being nearly full. The steeply pitched corrugated metal roof of our back-fence neighbor's garage is vivid, and its ridge is festooned with a dozen mini-moons like a string of forgotten Christmas lights. These will fade as their source rises and its beams change angle. Soon, the roof will wear a mantilla made of oak shadows. Dimmer than now, it will yet retain a presence distinct from the dark landscape it inhabits. I wonder if I'll ever be able to do that?