Looking at Things in a Different Light

Fri Noon An Undisclosed Industrial Park on Boston’s North Shore

I walk past the new construction site and all the explosive trucks parked in a line. It looks like a bomb site. Or a murder scene. They’ve killed the hillside and the mangled bedrock is bleeding everywhere. Not a pretty sight.

So I turn my head and look at the parcel of wetlands across the street that remains undeveloped, surrounded by all those unsightly glass-walled or supposedly stylish brick buildings. It’s the only natural stuff in town. Usually it’s a downer though, that poor leftover swamp-infested woods unconnected to the rest of the world.

But today I see it in a different light, that grace-filled illumination of early spring. There are some prerequisites to such a radiance though. First, the snows must be gone. Next, the day must be bright. And last it has to be early spring without any significant sign of foliage in the woodland.

Then the woods stand wonderfully clear, without leaves or shadow. It is, upon reflection, a quite surreal sight, naked December-like woods beneath a late summer sun. For this light today is equivalent to that last day of August, before the leaves start falling with abandon.

There’s something about that incongruity that brings acceptance of an otherwise unforgivable condition. Call it grace. Or call it April. I walk on with a spring in my step knowing there’s always some kind of resurrection after death, whether we live to see it or not.