Conjunctions

After supper, with the last burnished copper of sunset silhouetting the Parliament Buildings, I crossed the Corkstown footbridge over the Rideau Canal.  A sliver of moon dangled like night's earring in the darkening sky, with a planet, Venus I think, glittering just below.  It brought back a clear memory of the same sight nearly thirty years ago, at a time of change in my life.  I recall, then, stepping out of an Edmonton door into the evening to see the conjunction of those same two bodies.  They hung alone in the dusk, just above the western horizon.  Something about their splendid isolation made me suddenly conscious of myself as their admirer.  It gave me consolation and hope to realize that the night sky still held power to arrest me.

The scent of an autumn evening triggers the same urge in me as the scent of a spring morning.  I've had Joni Mitchell singing in my head for the past few weeks.

When I woke up today and found the frost perched on the town,

It hovered in a frozen sky and gobbled summer down.

When the sun turns traitor cold

And shivering trees are standing in a naked row

I get the urge for going and I never seem to go.

And I get the urge for going when the meadow grass is turning brown.

Summertime is falling down, winter's closing in.

The trees aren't yet shivering and naked.  But the fallen leaves blowing down the street have me thinking about what lies beyond the next corner.  And that leads me to thinking about what I have here:  the unique conjunction in time and space of people and places that gives life meaning.