Red Light

The bright light of early afternoon has blanketed the one-way city street. There are an assortment of semi- tall buildings and skyscrapers, some are sleek and new, their mirrored windows reflecting the perfect blue sky. Other are smaller, only ten stories high, remnants from an early period of architecture and city planning, the building faces are decorated with colorful tile work, geometric brick patterns, and wrought iron gates. The street is composed of three lanes, and I sit idling in the center lane, waiting at a red light. My hands are resting on the top of my steering wheel, gripping it out of habit. Within the small cab of my black truck, I feel the heat of the day amplified by the windshield. I am wearing a low cut T-shirt, and the exposed skin on my chest is warm and red from the sunlight. To my right is a man in a silver car, his hairy arm hangs out the window, his pudgy hand holds a burning cigarette. The smell surrounding me is a mix of smoke, car exhaust, and asphalt.
To my left is a liquor store, a black man in a black beanie emerges from the store with a poorly disguised vodka bottle in a paper sack. A short white man wearing a gray sweatshirt stands outside the entrance, smoking a cigarette. He looks up and down the street often, squinting his eyes with each inhalation. On the other side of the street is a small office supply store and an abandoned-feeling real estate office. Men in business suits move quickly on the sidewalks, a woman in a knee length brown skirt pushes a baby carriage toward the city center, and delivery men come and go with carts full of perishables.
My car window is open, and the sounds of accelerating cars and muffled ranchero music enters the space. There is a man pressed against my car. He is leaning in my window, his hands holding onto the steering wheel. As our eyes lock, he alternates between a human form, with distinguishable features and then, into a shadowy body with no face. He wears all dark clothes, black pants and a black hooded sweatshirt, and atop his bald head is a black hat. I smell his clothes, dirty and reeking of staleness. His face alternates from one of blackness without any shape to one of olive skin and a vague, stubbly beard. When he has eyes, they are dark brown and piercing, his eyebrows are thick with many long stray hairs turning away from any clear formation. He holds the wheel firmly with no intention of letting go.

Moon Glow

The night is dark, free from the light pollution of street lamps, illuminated only by a round moon hung white in the sky. Dust underfoot belongs to a dirt road, the end of which disappears into the deep purple shadows. Here it runs along the sparse rural fence of wire and wood to end wearily at the gate.
In the darkness, beyond the sagging lines of wire, an ample house lies low, hugging the earth under the canopy of a stout tree. A picture frame window glows yellow, promising warmth and comfort to those who will enter.
There are horses in stalls obscured from view of the road by nocturnal blindness. The stable can be only dimly perceived from where it hides behind the house. Outside the dominion of the fence, wild grass lays limp in the dewy moisture, it’s yellowness muted by moon glow. Bracken is charcoal hued, a reflection of the mysterious ambiguity bred in lack of light. The field spreads unabashedly under the caress of dark sky, a lonesome tree adrift in its vastness.
Near at hand there is the crackle of movement in the underbrush. The rustle of leaf and limb brushed by a sizable and advancing form. The cool electrifying night air awakens with its approach.
Moonlight glazes everything, the fence posts with their peeling white paint, the lonely tree in the field, and the big black wolf emerging from the inky chaparral. Its individual hairs lay like stiff black wire bristles upon its muzzle, spreading out and back, away from the black nostrils and round yellow eyes. A growl bubbles steadily in its throat like water coming to boil in a cast iron pot, and its pointed teeth glisten white, jutting from the pink gum line revealed by snarl curled lips. Its grimace is beautiful, riveting before the sleeping homestead, framed by purple night and bathed in moonshine.

Facing the Maelstrom

The sea level has risen catastrophically so that what was once a cliff is now a beach. Dark waves tumble chaotically with mammoth force. Creatures are rising from the deep.

Two gray whales breach, their colossal bodies sending the turbulent surface into even greater paroxysms. Swells climb to mountainous heights as innumerable Orcas surface to defy gravity with their awesome acrobatics. These great warm blooded killers move with speed and grace. Their presence is at once mirthful and predatory.

The building sea threatens to swallow the stormy sky. Only a band of fierce clouds streaked by momentary flashes of lightening remains visible. Huge sleek black bodies weave in and out among the choppy surge, darker even than the water, their white markings staring at the shore like big Egyptian eyes. This procession threatens to over take the remaining stretch of beach.

The waters lap at once unknown shores. A handful of daring human beings are in the water with the whales. Their tiny bodies are in constant danger of being swallowed up in the maelstrom, but like the whales, they are gleeful, eager for this encounter.

Panic in the City

High rise buildings in various somber shades cover the earth- dense in their geometric formations. There is smoke coming from one of the towers, shaped like a tall, thin pyramid, thick plumes of gray escape from its pointed peak, rushing to atmospheric freedom.

Surrounding me is panic, the road is consumed with chaos; cars are turning around, trucks are crossing lanes to exit, some speed towards the large bridge in the distance.
The burning gray figure looms close, the ominous vision that further turmoil is imminent.