Stopping by woods

There's a little scrap of woods a stone's throw from my house. Scruffy, with pockets of litter - hemmed in by the backs of people's gardens, a clogged up drainage channel and new build houses, it's a place to walk the dog in the morning. Other people walk their dogs there, too, so it's as well to keep one eye on the ground.

It was a morning like any other. We were both in our own worlds. Me - composing a text message as I trailed along behind the dog, eyes flicking to the path ahead. The dog - tail up, following her nose. 

I could have missed it entirely, but something about the shimmering white light at the end of a path rarely taken by me or the dog stopped me in my tracks. Moth-like, I drew closer and at a certain point I saw them in all their glory: sunbeams - like something a child might draw with pencil and ruler – slanting through the trees. 

I stepped into the nearest beam of light and closed my eyes. I don't know why. Superstition, fancy, an imagined warmth. Nothing happened - no pot of gold, no unicorn galloping out of the trees - but for a fraction of time both seemed almost possible.

Of all the words that might capture this experience - so many now drained of meaning - there is one that my agnostic self hesitates to use; but standing in a sunbeam, right there on my suburban doorstep, the ever present thrum of A14 traffic as backdrop, I felt blessed. 

I rejoined the dog and having completed our short circuit, returned for one more look at at my sunbeams. Already the sun had moved on, only a ghostly trace remaining.