Night Walk

I took a flash light but didn't use it, because although it was dark, the clouds were illuminated in a strange sort of way, not glowing from within but lighter than they should have been at that time of night. 

It was a type of afterglow, but of sunlight rather than sunset. Clouds that had wandered into the evening sky and forgotten to dim their brights; clouds that almost looked fake, as if they were painted for the set of a high school musical. 

Walking home under the vault of heaven, staring at those clouds, I thought about how we so often forget that which is above us. It’s easy to do once inside, with our house pleasures and chores, with our television and computer screens, with the light they emit, the stories they tell. 

But all along, the night sky is out there, an abundance we ignore, perhaps because we must. Like all the seeds that never sprout, like all the words we never say.