Gray Day

Gray beauty startled me today. The fairies have run away, my childlike innocent capering world is gone; the world that remains is old and wise. I am wandering alone.

And I, who grow dizzy with giddiness in sunshine, and weep with color in sunsets, am learning to love gray.

("I who so love scarlet
Wear a gown of black,
Quaintly fitted tunic
Buttoned up the back.")

Color has not disappeared, only given up its gaudy frolic. It has grown more deliberate, more careful. The trees have wrapped themselves more closely. Fields' green, red velvet of roads, belongs to them and not to me; even the scarlet splashes of sumac are separate, apart. I neither wish, nor wish not to be, but simply am--alone. There is no lightning or thunder; those would require energy. Only gray and mist.

The sky reminds me of the ocean, our last day together at the beach--do you remember? We strode silently through the sand, our toes and legs numb with the wet cold, without feeling it. Solitude immense as the sea, intense as the waves went with us, walking together. The quiet was so deep I was afraid to breathe, could not look at you.

Now I turn, my Baggins side uppermost, saying I "should have been home yesterday." There are days one wants nothing more than a fireplace and a checkered tablecloth, waiting for someone who will be glad to be home. But that is not what I have now.

I shall have tea and Mendelssohn, and wait in quietness.

O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my wearied soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.

~George Matheson