Sunlight
by Jim Harrison After days of darkness I didn't understand a second of yellow sunlight here and gone through a hole in clouds as quickly as a flashbulb, an immense memory of a moment of grace withdrawn. It is said that we are here but seconds in cosmic time, twelve and a half billion years, but who is saying this and why? In the Salt Lake City airport eight out of ten were fiddling relentlessly with cell phones. The world is too grand to reshape with babble. Outside the hot sun beat down on clumsy metal birds and an actual ten-million-year-old crow flew by squawking in bemusement. We're doubtless as old as our mothers, thousands of generations waiting for the sunlight.
