Sky & Wordsworth

The late afternoon sky yesterday was take-your-breath-away beautiful. The sky was clear and hazy at the same time, dotted with flat-bottomed, fluffy-topped clouds, white, shot through with gray and pink. The horizon was an undulating line separating the dark land, textured with the various colors of autumn foliage, from the transcendantly clear sky marked here and there with smudges dark gray. Pale pink light glowed from beyond the horizon. The air seemed animated with the presence of something eternal and I felt very small and very large at once.

I thought of Tintern Abbey suddenly. As Wordsworth’s familiar words spoke in my head I felt both cliched and brand new.

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused…