Three Panes of Light

Three small shapes have formed in the light that touches our sheer white curtains. Three tombstone shapes, but tombstones are too dark and morbid and solid a metaphor, of clodded graves and crypts and death. So perhaps they are three ghosts. But ghosts are vague, shimmery, quavering things, curvy and mystical; indecisive; wavering, as it were, between comedy and terror. Not at all, these sharp-edged, curved-top, near-rectangle shapes that grace my window this morning. The soft folds of our drapes give thin, wispy legs to the shapes, ready for silly cartoon men to take to their spindly legs and dance about. But cartoon men are all wrong on this quiet, peaceful day. The shapes of light lie too still to inspire the energetic dancing and chattering of whimsical little men. It breaks the spell. It ruins the mood. In the end, they are just three still panes of light on a pale curtain in a silent room, that captivate and cheer me... then quietly disappear.