church on sunday

In the stolen hour between the shift in the clocks I head out into the stormy grey. Bright leaf-fall showers me like a bride. Confetti wet and scattered beneath my feet, the very ground I walk.

A razor thin slice of dawn orange slits the eastern clouds. Sudden, passing then gone to grey once more. Bins are upended. A disused sofa lies sponging up the sodden sky. These leaves carpeting my walk. It is east I am headed in the turbulence of this morning.

This church stands amid the building work and passing traffic, the clatter of the wind. It is where a friend was married a marriage ago. At the speeches his new brother-in-law took a turn to say something. We all waited as he sat in puzzled silence. The silence grew and the room was a hundred bums shifting on seats. He looked up at the groom. He looked askance once more at the head table where he sat. Then he stood and looked over at the groom. He said ..

I love you. Welcome to the family.

then sat back down. It was the most moving speech at a wedding I have ever heard.

So to the present and the troubled sky. I was blown from memory and the skin prickle of that moment into framing a shot. Then home. Home by the end of that stolen hour. A stolen hour where the sky, a building upended my walk and revealed this memory of pure grace.