morning swim
The play of light on water takes mesmeric to new levels. An arm breaks the surface in a bronze arc and the white patterns swarm in anarchy. For a brief moment the muscled back glints with a white film, before it sinks for the next stroke. Pools of sunlight gather in the troughs of ripples, in the spaces between the leaves overhead, in the white grin of a child's wet face thrust to the sky; but beneath the exultant froth of some swimmer's thrashing frontcrawl is the promise of darkness, and stillness.
In the mornings, though, there is a greater game afoot. Today, standing waist deep in the water, I watched the line of sunrise creep across the entire pool, slowly drawing night's curtains aside, and I thought of the play of light on our entire planet - sunlight pooling in the troughs of mountain ranges, spilling lengthening shadows for miles as Earth spins out the daily awakening. How curious, to be able to wake up and go for a morning swim, and stand at the water's edge smiling happily at the light patterns, without one's thoughts constantly meandering to those ponderous celestial mechanisms that dapple our mountain ranges, our forest glades, our swimming pools, that make those patterns possible at all.
PS: It has always amused me, every so often, to recall that I am standing at the equator of this enormous spherical planet of ours, nonchalantly perpendicular, and that I go about my daily life mostly without ever giving this a second thought. If we encountered people in the street standing nonchalantly halfway up a wall, there would be a ruckus; but planets, oh, that's ok.