Louisiana Sunrise

It's an enchanted forest, steam rising from the ground that sits too low. If I stopped the car and got out, I would either sink or float away and it would be the same thing. Everything is just flat and green, life swarming out of the ground. Trees line the horizon, dark, half submerged in swampy water.

Mercifully, the sun has not yet taken its place in the sky. Layers of bluish purple and pink, lighter blue on top.

This is the world in its most pristine state before the sun begins boiling the ground, bringing moisture skyward, perspiration outwards until nightfall.

When finally the sun rises, it arrives with melodramatic flare as though to dismiss all those other sunrises that came before. I pull of the highway along the gulf coast. Someone has abandoned a refrigerator on the side of the road. The sunrise is 40 feet tall, thirty feet wide, a few clouds linger above it. An animal flitters across the road and it's a mystery creature. I have no idea what it was, but it doesn't matter. Beer cans litter the ditch. A fence holds me out of a field. A dilapidated house across the way, everything sinking into decay.