#67 Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise.

To have risen at seven this morning you would have awakened to a pale blue-gray sky, striated clouds with glints of soft yellow light peeking through, the water moving from the north, a dark steely-blue palate of shiver.

More than an hour before, the entire sky was a rage of color, not a strip or streak but the entire sky pulsing with an intensity of Tutankhamun gold and yellows. The stretched horizontal clouds over the water were nearly black, further emphasizing the brilliant gold of the sky, the water not yet illuminated enough to be even noticed. There was no room for thought, only my still body and my astonished eyes moving back and forth across the expanse. Nothing but color flooding all other senses.

The movement of the sun still below the horizon means light changes measured by seconds, layers of light folding over itself. Just above the horizon, a long wide ribbon of cranberry appears. Not red. Precisely cranberry, a cranberry specifically distinct like out of a Crayola box. Then ever so slowly the cranberry becomes cherry, then morphs into pink and orange, blending like the sounds of flutes and oboes rising beneath a symphony dominated by strings.

The sun moves up to the horizon, its rise dissipating the intensity of colors as the strength of its pinpoint light washes the sky. Where earlier the colors of the entire sky had throbbed now the me-me-me of the sun’s round dominance overtakes everything.

There is no photograph. Limitations of the camera could not capture the scale, vibratory color, mass, or intensity. A photograph would allow the “Oh, a sunrise” to replace the beyond-belief presence of that sky, the colors still permeating my bones, my soul.