by Rembrandt Ramilo
It was late,past ten in the evening,I was not sleepy yet,so I went outside the house for a break.
After a short walk,not very far,I reached the bridge over a calm, silent and dark river. I spent a little time there.
At that hour of the night,seldom people or any kind of car will cross it.
Almost at midpoint,standing on one side of the bridge, I looked into the last stretch of the river, its line rising northeast to its mouth to the lake. At the end of it was a halftone-white streamerlike outline of the mountain ridge. Laterally down below it, were a number of iridescent lights- white, tawny and gold, possibly radiating from some houses at the foot of the mountain.
Because of the darkness of the night, I could hardly see the water near below the bridge,except for few spaces in line with the shafts of riverside lights.There in the surface, the centrifugal concentric circles in constant motion as if showered by the falling of numberless minuscule drips by an invisible persevering drizzle.
The beautiful night sky was governed by the crescent convex underside-edged moon,appearing like a luculent stationary golden boat suspended in the air,sailing over the waves of white and black clouds slowly moving beneath it.
The moon in the ocean of the entire firmament,bestrewed by myriad of glittering stars,in threes,sometimes in straight lines,others with vertices or right angles. If I had a pen and paper then and was able to draw lines through them, I could have drafted some hexagons or polyhedrons and other non-Eucledian geometries.
From the east high above the mountain, a fleck of golden light slowly moving toward the west moon. Even airplanes chose to travel and experience the wondrous spectacle of the night.
We have always appreciated places or views under the light of the day, yet I say nature can also be beautiful at night.
I’m not sure if this river is that fascinating during day time, but at that hour of the night, though dark and cold and steady,has given me a unique satisfaction and intellectual abstraction of life and has shown congruence to the celestial nocturne of nature.
Maybe it was time to go back home then, in a short while that airplane I saw could have been very close to the moon.
Editors Note on Dark River:
Dark River is not the first piece by Rembrandt Ramilo published in Eastlit. He has previously been published in Eastlit as follows:
- The Old Lake Port was published in Eastlit July 2013.
- Colonial Arch was published in Eastlit September 2013.
- In a Distant Land Where He Lays was published in Eastlit November.
- The Wind of November appeared in Eastlit February 2014.
