Low Clouds Over the Bay
02/06/2010
Sometimes at night, when there has been or is about to be rain, but it’s not raining at the moment, the clouds make a very dark, very low ceiling over the water. You can see it—I mean, you don’t just see darkness and the absence of stars, you see an actual surface, because there is so much light coming up from the town. And there are lights all around the horizon, and looking across the bay especially, to the lights of Mobile, the effect is spooky and lurid, as if darkness is literally settling down, and the light around its edges has something unhealthy about it—a sort of greenish glow struggling to get out from under the clouds. It makes me think of the battles at the end of The Lord of the Rings, when the Black Gate has opened and Sauron has covered the sky with smoke and clouds, producing a day without dawn. But these clouds will probably be gone in the morning.
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