around the bend

There is a point during my drive to work where I come around a soft bend in the road to find that the dark asphalt of the freeway has turned into a river of gold and the horizon ahead is ablaze with yellow and white, bursting through the soft clouds in shards of light.  Simultaneously every car, van, and truck slows down, blinded by the light, but also I'd guess gobsmacked by the brilliance of what is filling up their vision.  I imagine the wheels of stress and everyday worry that continuously grind away in all our minds slow and for an instant there is some clarity.

This is where the idea of heaven comes from, I am certain.  Even I, a skeptic and unbeliever to my core, have a brief moment where I can almost see him in the after image the sun burns into my eyes.  Not the baby I held in my arms, or the tow-headed and befreckled boy who occasionally visits me on the banks of my imagination.  I see him.  All of him.  His sum total and the perfection in his human imperfection.  Whatever it is that makes us who we are...that's what I see.  It is a fleeting vision that seems to fill up every atom in my body and one I wish I could follow into the horizon when it recedes back into the soup of life.

The angle of the sun only aligns itself with me at this time of year.  Every other month it is just a freeway, just an ordinary morning sun and just another day in an ordinary life.  But for a few brief weeks during Spring I know he is waiting for me, just up ahead and around the soft bend.