Where is the wild, always? Look up to the wild blue.

In the first week of December, Colorado skies have cleared completely. Cloudless after the Thanksgiving weekend storms and this morning’s sky is black as stout. Stars are widely visible, the air is crisp but not frigid. Mercury can be seen by your eyes unaided. At 35 degrees I can still stand comfortably in a long sleeve “T” with my coffee cup in my hand.

Where is the wild, always, no matter where you are: a city’s zealous core or the sylvan edges near the region of your home–the ones radiating toward the mountains, on the other side of a lake, down at the shore, or out on the desert road? The wild is above you always. You can regard the wild, soak it in this way, by looking up. You don’t need to rely only on the memory of that day in the countryside.

The sky: light breaking blue

This early morning I was searching for the moon and found the black sky instead. I learned the waxing gibbous crescent will not be visible until shortly after noon. If the clear skies hold we will see it easily throughout the day. In just the time it took to write these paragraphs the sky has transformed, breaking to blue. As peaceful as you might feel observing the night sky’s pitchness, the blue that breaks at this hour is breathtaking. William Gass wrote in his book length essay on the color, feeling, and poetic textures of blue: “Blue is the color of the mind in borrow of the body; it is the color consciousness becomes when caressed.” If this is true, blue might be a good color for us all to be associated with and should not always be held as the the standard bearer for melancholy. Especially in light of (and blue appears in light) all the the things in nature in which the color occurs. Gass goes on: “Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. ” Given this, I believe blue should be known for its emotional versatility, maybe even more so than the other primary and secondary colors. Who can make red or yellow express the color of solitude?

In the blue emerging in the sky, which throughout this day, will have more subtlety in a range of hues than can possibly be catalogued, the moon will rise and arc as a soft white smudge in the wild blue above. That white will contain blue, because blue is in a wide range of visible light, especially those objects in the wild blue sky. Look up today, friends.

Haiku a day until midwinter

Tanku:  Waiting for the moon

 Search for the moon’s light
 Ease forward to the clearing
 Feet gnaw at the ice
 How is the sky black as oil?
 No crescent ‘til noon

*This form is Tanku,  5-7-5-7-7 syllable, five lines