Early Smilin'

I stayed up late Saturday night...early Sunday morn. Played a little Fallout 3. Then defined sections in Last Joe for a couple hours: what will fit where. I need a synopsis I can read in a minute. So I can stay on track. After, did a last bit of surfing the triple-w. Watched the Brits in Protag well into their day. Then updated anti-badstuff definitions for Malwarebytes and Avira, for their Sunday morning auto-scans after I go to bed. About 4 AM.

I stuck my head around the bedroom curtain for a last looksie outside my window, around at the world slumbering this grey last hour before dawn.

For once, no first birdsong from the green trees. A string of taxis hummed past along Marine Drive. Maybe headed downtown this early, bound for the convention center and whichever cruise ship might be docking, or departing. Or maybe those taxis were just going wherever taxis go at 4 AM. Maybe for breakfast. Or a group huddle.

Across the next alley a lowslung cat trotted, slunk in between parked cars.

Overhead, grey broken clouds were washed in white. As if the sun's glow had already found them from over the edge of the Earth. I saw blue sky. And no stars peering down.

Had the stars, or anyone, peered my way, they'd have seen me in the window smiling.

Butterfly and Moon

You know those shots you wish you'd snapped with your camera? The unexpected happening in your everyday. The strange. The wonderful. But maybe it happens too quickly. You figure it wouldn't have turned out. Or tell yourself some other reason, which stops you even trying. I do that, all the time.

Not this time, though. I saw a little passing something on my walk home after staring a while at my old brown river. Butterfly and the moon. I glimpsed the little life fluttering past the edge of my eye, high enough there was sun and blue around him. And the crescent moon up there.

I've got pretty good reflexes. Gamer's reflexes, I'll call 'em. I swung round the camera. Took the shot. Really from the hip. Because it'd be gone in another blink. Naturally, it's not in focus. But then I wasn't after poster perfect.