Golden Moments

It is only for a moment that the sun catches the trees in the forest just right, and they turn into gold. Gold tree trunks as far as the eye can see, covered with gold leaves, all the way from the ground up, and then the moment is gone, and it is just an ordinary forest with the rising sun hitting it, like it does every morning. 

It is only for a moment, a fleeting moment, that the same sun that rises above the Edom mountain range on the Jordanian border facing the dining room windows in my house on the edge of the desert, blush the otherwise bare landscape with blazing shades of red, as if caught on fire, and then it is back to the dull browns. 

Above the jagged mountains that pierce the sapphire sky, and down into the azure warm water of the Red sea, licking the shore, the rising sun lights up a kaleidoscope of fish and corals, in the unending depth.

I can envision the sun lighting the craggy valley beneath my bedroom window, in our apartment building in Jerusalem. The valley of the ghosts (Emek Refaim), that for as long as I can remember hosted the train going into the city, the same valley that once divided my town, with an unseen, yet impassable border. 

And the kettle shrieks and the water bubbles and my white cat strings a cord of silk around my feet, and I land. 

It is only my kitchen, facing a line of trees in the back yard, bounded by a tall stack of wood waiting for winter, next to the stone wall. 

And I smile to myself, what a magical journey.