Lumière Filtrée

Lyrics

You were walking ahead of me. Just a few steps. On the path near Arzon, late August.

The sun was a hammer, but the oak leaves... they were a sieve. A thousand green hands, breaking the light into pieces. Scattering it like coin on the forest floor. And the ground, it became a screen. A live projection. The scent of chlorophyll and damp earth. You stopped, and I watched the light play on your shoulders.

There isn't a word for it in our language. This dance of the uncatchable. This shifting map of what is here and what is gone. Just a momentary architecture of light and leaf. Komorebi. The Japanese have a word. Of course they do.

You pointed up. And I saw the dust motes, the pollen, the whole world's debris, suddenly illuminated. Each one a tiny planet in a golden beam. Proof that the light itself is invisible. We only see what it strikes. These parallel rays that trick the eye, that seem to bloom from a single point. A trick of perspective.

There isn't a word for it in our language. This dance of the uncatchable. This shifting map of what is here and what is gone. Just a momentary architecture of light and leaf. Komorebi. The Japanese have a word. Of course they do.

And I thought about the pinhole camera effect. How during an eclipse, these same leaves would project a hundred tiny crescents on the dirt. The world revealing its secrets in the shadows of other secrets. We can't hold it. We can't even truly see it. Only its effect on the particles between us.

A cloud passed. The wind stilled. The dance floor went dark. You turned around and smiled. And the moment was already a memory. Komorebi. Komorebi.