Winter Sky.

In which our hero remembers a pleasure: Driving home, in the truck, into a western winter sky -- best seen coming up and over the little hill out at the Brightwood, somewhere between Burlington and Whitsett and Sedalia. High thin clouds off to the northern side of the sky, gray then orange and then a kind of green-blue, the ground all around all of those colors but orange, the leafless trees graying to black as we worked through the last of the light. Thin clouds in front of the sun itself as it set, making it more like a smudge than a star. Cold and free-falling to colder out there. We'll shortly be into the thirties and then the twenties. It is unabashedly winter. Soup. Scotch. Tea. Coffee. Time to bring out the heavy shirts. Thick socks. Almost time to turn in grades, which will mean an end to anything other than tea and coffee and soup and scotch, and a long beautiful January of living inside the book. But it's only December fifth. Not maybe time to start dreaming yet. Time to start checking for a star in the east, perhaps, but not quite time to expect it to be there. For now, stick to the sunset. The western sky. Too soon to ask for miracles.