Shadows!

We've had about seven months of gray skies and rain, and I can't remember when we last had strong shadows. 

I kept peering out my windows and doing little jigs of delight, though I was confined by tasks to the house. I broke free around 5pm to take another bag of books to the little library by the hospital, and coming back to the house I sat on some stairs across from this wall and made a series of photos. Here's one.

It seemed only natural to reach for my copy of Ted Kooser's Delights & Shadows. Here's a lovely batch of his words.

A Box of Pastels

I once held on my knees a simple wooden box
to which a rainbow lay dusty and broken.
It was a set of pastels that had years before
belonged to the painter Mary Cassatt,
and all of the colors she'd used in her work
lay open before me. Those hues she'd most used,
the peaches and pinks, were worn down to stubs,
while the cool colors--violet, ultramarine--
had been set, scarcely touched, to one side.
She'd had little patience with darkness, and her heart
held only a measure of shadow. I touched
the warm dust of those colors, her tools,
and left there with light on the tips of my fingers.