in the sky, out of the sky

Last night the air was funny. Moonlight and sodium-lamp light pollution mixed like some poorly considered cocktail and yet produced quite a sight in the sky - this sort of orange, billowly, clear, immanent-ness. I felt like I was certainly underwater. I made me think of this book I read as a kid that I've never found anyone else has read or even heard of called "Under Plum Lake." This felt like that.

Maybe this kind of light is too much for delicate things. Or maybe it is just the season and the actuary tables that dictate the lives of small creatures: downtown at the corner of State and Monroe was this little wren lying on the ground, still very soft.

Kobayashi Issa:

That wren--
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?

Dale M. Kushner:

.....Her small body is dense with a radiance
she doesn't have to earn.
All that's required
is to live the ancestral life
over again
without any urge to change it.