Shadows

All morning the clouds and their mysterious shadows drifted constant as a pod of whales across the soggy hills. For hours I sat and watched and eventually stopped thinking of them as whales, imagining them instead as voluptuous brides in billowing white dresses wafting down a petal-strewn knoll, which caused me to think of honeymoons, then coastlines, romantic resorts, candlelight and sex. To get my mind off sex I thought about God, who made the world and cumulus clouds and Adam and Eve in Eden, naked and not the least ashamed, which got me thinking about sex again as the blooming clouds and their shadows flowed on and on. Then, after long silence, I heard the plane, its lonely drone, as trifling as a far off bee. I thought little of it. The clouds held my gaze. Then suddenly the airplane's shadow pounced on me from behind, enveloped me like a swift eclipse, then shot like a leopard away. A rare occurence: five or six times, at most, have I been darkened by an airplane’s shadow. One’s could measure one’s life by such unlikelihoods. Indeed, I do. Each time it happens I ponder how many foreshadowings remain. Only the shadow of an airplane could get me thinking about death on such an exquisite day.