--by Bob Eklund

The pink overcast
Opens to Orion's stars:
A change of season.



The low stratus clouds, which so often form at night over the coastal part of Los Angeles where I live, were a shade of dark pink as a result of our sodium-vapor street lighting.  Then a gap opened in the cloud-layer, like curtains parting at a play, just big enough for Orion to show through.  And the sky beyond the cloud deck was less light-polluted than usual, since the low clouds kept the light from reaching the upper sky.