Beth’s Window

Beth loved to sit by the blue ocean. She loved to watch the clouds, the sea breeze sway white sails.

Her special park bench was planted among flowers. Like the dancing sails, the flowers came to life in the breeze, their bright colors tickling her eyes, tickling the sparkling blue that stretched away beyond sight. At the horizon the aquamarine water transformed to topaz.  From there, ascendant magic lifted sun-sculpted clouds.

The world of flowers, water and sky seemed to her like a living window. A window with no frame.

. . .

The afternoon of the total eclipse brought a wall of people to the water’s side. The wall stood in front of Beth’s bench.

The wall’s eyes were down.

Anxious hands clutched a blank piece of paper. The people minutely examined a tiny crescent of light produced by a pin hole.

At total eclipse, the people craned their necks momentarily toward the appalling black hole in the sky.

Then stared again at slivers of light.

The wall finally crumbled.

Sitting on her bench, her small, single perch beside the stretching ocean, Beth breathed in with relief.

The shutters of her window had been reopened.

Beth gazed with her ever-thirsty eyes at the water, the endless sky. Above crushed flowers white sails still swayed in the ocean breeze, moving across the blue water. The living clouds were touched again by eternal light. And she knew her flowers would regrow.