Fiery Potential

Living in a small city is okay. Most of the time I'm just concerned with how it functions: public transportation, shops in walking distance, schools, work... This isn't a grand city that people can't believe I live in like when I lived in New York or Versailles. It's got bridges, ports and a tramway but it was rebuilt quickly after it got blasted to bits during World War II and it shows. 

On occasion,  it doesn't look half bad. Sometimes there's a beautiful sunset or a murmuration of starlings outside my window. I want to take a photo but there's always an eyesore like the roadworks depot, a stray crane or an old TV antenna poking into my frame. I either crop them out or contort myself to get an angle where they don't show. Or I just don't take the picture.

Sunday morning, I woke up and looked out my bedroom window. I saw a flaming arrow midair over the zinc roofs of nearby row houses. I ran downstairs to get the camera and looked out the studio window. No more flaming arrow. I ran back upstairs. And there it was.

I had to look from that spot, at that angle to see this serendipitous message in the sky. An arrow. 

Pointing at what? Maybe it wasn't pointing at anything; maybe it was pointing out something. Point of view is essential. I could only see this from here. I had to know where and when to look to know that things can be more than they seem. When the sun rose higher in the sky, it was gone. The old TV antenna was back but it's potential to blaze in a fiery form was still there.