The Golden Light

My week is not complete until I spend a morning at the lake with a cup of coffee and a book. All summer long, I have enjoyed the shade under the oaks and sycamores, the sunlight enticing the fairies the dance on the water and leave their glitter behind. I enjoy the rustle of leaves when a breeze doesn't cool the heat of summer but rather moves the heat around a bit.

It is September 1, and the season has taken its cue from the calendar. A few leaves float down on that breeze that isn't moving heat so much as bringing a light chill. The glitter on the water is more like ice than the fire of diamonds. The light is a different color.

I'm sure there is a scientific explanation as to why the light look different. It probably has something to do with the slant of the light as it spears us through the atmosphere. The tilt of the earth on its axis is more oblique, or some such thing.

If I were in another frame of mind, I might research and write about the science lesson I could teach to my middle schoolers. I'd wax eloquent about historical figures who studied astronomy.

Today is not that day.

Today I am in a more poetic mindset. I see the light as a warm gold, foreshadowing the brightly colored leaves that will soon crown the noble trees, just as Victoria or Elizabeth wore their royal jewels.

The light is like the backside of a beautiful lady, gliding away through the crowd, leaving the men weak in her wake.

As I sit in the shade, the light is the whisper of a voice outside the prison wall, a window up high, too far to away to touch and the whisper coming through on the wind.

The calendar says the official start to fall is still three weeks away. The leaves are still more green than yellow or red. The sun is still warm.

But the light has changed. We've turned the corner, and summer is all but over. The kids are back in school, or almost. Labor Day is this weekend. Few of us will take vacations at this point.

For as long as it lasts -- whether the unremitting heat of summer or the chillier breeze of fall -- I'll enjoy the light for as long as it lasts.