Hues of the Lane

I look down upon a leaden lane,

a cold stone road, our urban thoroughfare.

Besieged worse yet by brackish towering buildings,

it seemed bereft of beauty, bar the blue

sky above:

early summer’s cerulean embrace.

What a joy it was to stare to the skies,

as the lane

would bustle and brim

under such a lazulite gaze.

Yet as days drew on and the azure

stare glanced elsewhere, the warm air would stand still,

and sultry hues of rose

and faint amber began to trickle in, dressed only in

thin streaks of cloud.

The petals of a solitary cherry tree

flittered down the cooling concrete road, like

shards of nature’s shattered mirror, that aspired to

the heavenly tones above.

Yet little comparison could be drawn from the

passing blossoms fair,

to the sensuous skies afar, as they

danced through shades of splendour like

beauty’s dying breath, before

sullen black drapes caressed the

street below.

I could naught but blink and

pigment fell away like the banging of a gavel,

and I was met with an abyssal peer

whose pale eye casts its ivory glare

upon scenes so vast my mind

would bend

to know

them.

I saw my street seized by a dark tyrant’s

hand, shrivelling into

something miniscule, murky and

unknown; my

home soon warped by

some tenebrous veneer to where

it was home to me

no longer.

But through the

blazing blackness,

a whimper of light sparked to life, and the lane

was flecked by flickering fluorescent beacons

like fireflies in the brush of the

great dark woods above.

The streetlights sputtered and spat

their mildew hues at the

walls of inky midnight,

cheap mockeries of the

sunlight that staved off such dark

for so long before.

Yet in those long fraught hours,

comfort sprang upon me and

my fears began to pale,

as I saw our manmade lights

falter and flail against that onslaught of absence,

knowing yet that

the sky’s shifting shades would usher in

radiant morning’s gold and coral come dawn,

were I to stand and watch

or not.

Now when I still look to that lowly lane,

that greying path, our urban thoroughfare,

knowing full well the frescoes above,

I feel my gaze drawn

downwards.

Flecks of vivid beauty

that missed the canvas paint seemlier

scenes for me instead, as they

walk and talk, bustle and brim,

in hues of animate humanity itself,

a beautiful, knowable droplet in the

ever shifting

hues of the lane.