Astounding

It is monsoon season and the colors are deep at sunset. As I look east the sky is a dark blue behind the reddish brown mountains, freckled with green. The clouds are out of focus. They are dollops of color and I can't say where they begin or end.

I turn west and the clouds are sharp in the final glare of the sun. There is a dim gap where there are no clouds to catch the light. The scene doesn't add up. It's hard to resolve against the bright sunset, but there are clouds up in that dark patch. The darkness lies between two sharp lines radiating out from the sun. The lines converge just short of the western horizon where the shadow is as jagged as a mountain top.

It's a shadow cast upward onto the clouds. It seems so obvious now. I must have stared at such a shadow a thousand times before without comprehension. How could I have missed this arm of the night, grasping ahead into the fading daylight?