Today my wife, son and I were walking around our neighborhood during sunset and we noticed a huge and beautiful cloud lit up in an interesting way. It resembled a phoenix with a long billowy tail, large curly wings and almost shimmering neck and head.
This image got me to thinking that maybe this represented Shuga reborn in the sky as a beautiful phoenix. I was following this train of thought and realized that the theme of images in the clouds could be followed throughout our journey with death. The foreshadowing of the dragon and eagle battle the other night followed by Shuga running around the sky the day she passed and now a big phoenix in the clouds. All the images remind me of Samson Agonistes by Milton. Milton describes Samson's internal turmoil after being imprisoned by the Philistines and the power of his hair cut off and his eye removed and the internal and external blindness he encounters. He discusses dragons, eagles and a rebirth that of a phoenix:
"And with blindness internal struck.
Semichor. But he though blind of sight,
Despis'd and thought extinguish't quite,
With inward eyes illuminated
His fierie vertue rouz'd
From under ashes into sudden flame,
And as an ev'ning Dragon came,
Assailant on the perched roosts,
And nests in order rang'd
Of tame villatic Fowl; but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunder bolted on thir heads.
So vertue giv'n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem'd,
Like that self-begott'n bird
In the Arabian woods embost
That no second knows nor third,
And lay e're while a Holocaust,
From out her ashie womb now teem'd
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem'd,
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives."
Samson Agonistes 1686-1708 by John Milton
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