Photo by Rose Cummings

~~Nothing matches the wild, dark beauty of the sky after the rains have stopped.  It was such an evening again this day in Boston.  The pouring rain of the past 24 hours subsided into a drizzle that stretched languidly into mid-afternoon. The air was humid, the sky grey and opaque.  In mid-afternoon, the drizzle gave way to a brief, quiet interlude.  Everything seemed suspended, waiting, waiting for the evening sun to appear as if out of nowhere turning the surface of things–the streets, the skies, the buildings–into a spectacle of thick shadows and instantaneous sparks, the sadness of day’s end braided to the burst of sunlight and wind after such a long, humid monotone.

On such rare evenings, the right thing to do is find the longest way to get to one’s final destination of the day.  The right thing to do is be receptive to waywardness, resisting the car and the subway, and opting instead for the pleasures of riding the bus.  Actually, as many buses as one can hop on to and off from. Which is what I did–three buses in all, and a little over a mile on my two tiny feet–the air linen crisp, the sky distant and indifferent but also fragile, tenuous.

On such rare evenings, the thing to do is look, really look, which is what my wayward path home to the suburbs occasioned. To look, without a smartphone under my nose, without sunglasses to shield my eyes from the wind and the sun.  To look with as much attention as I can extract from the end of a long, tiring day.  To look.

Still under the spell of the evening’s revelation, I stumbled on this terrific photograph by my friend and colleague, Rose Cummings, taken this afternoon.  She in the city heading to the shore, and I across the river heading home; she an intimate of images and I, of words.  Both of us looking, looking.  ~~