"The same color as the hour"

"The same color as the hour," Merwin says in The Folding Cliffs and that stops me, who notes the color of hours.

Getting up to run in the dark, over the summer, when the sun makes the sky look like mismatched pages out of a Pantone book, each shade graduating to a higher brilliance.

And noting the star-moon shade of midnight, the clear hour, the black separated a bit so it stands out as a backdrop.

The pink hour of sunset, which is the reason to live near or be on the water, the sunset showing off for the horizon, but not cocky, just calm, smiling, sharing its news of hues and saturation and saying fuck separation, I'm just gonna blur/smear them across the sky and let you drink it in. Discuss.

Yes, I note the color of hours. I should maybe keep a notebook of them. My memory is full of these colors: Boone Creek seen through Budweiser pony bottles; the blurring of the Choptank and the sky; the white-yellow licking the greens out of breath along the trails at Tuckahoe; the pink-red-orange of of the hour of sunset on the Tred Avon on our wedding night that carried collective hearts and smiles.

And this morning, as the color of the hour can't be said, can't be pinned down because the color of the minute isn't constant, elusive, slippery--I blame you, Merwin, for pointing out that hours have colors.

Something About the Sun

Something about the sun, about how it feels different on your face come spring. About how it means baseball season and free Cokes for foul balls and practice after school. And games at Memorial Stadium where, as a son, I remember the chants, "Ed-die! Ed-die!"

Something about the sun and how, mixed with sky blue it makes spring green and brings swimming in cold water at the ferry dock.

Something about the sun and how it warms memories out--a great fiery reminder of the bright beautiful memories it has given us.

Something about the sun and running as it stretches its arms over the horizon, can't help but smile back on a sunrise run.

And Sun Salutations--mountain, upward salute, standing forward bend--and how, like running the postures and movements are the same each day, but each day different, like the sun, and how each gives us a conversation, a greeting with our movement in the morning, each bowing and stretching and smiling toward the other.

Something about the sun and how it means wisdom and understanding and warmth and light and waking and day, and what we might say to it, if we thought it would answer, which, of course, it does.

The eternal, earth, air, heaven
That glory, that resplendence of the sun
May we contemplate the brilliance of that light
May the sun inspire our minds.

Gayatari mantra, from the Rig Veda, translated by Douglas Brooks