Vision-Night Intersection

Night Intersection
8" x 12"
watercolors
"What's that in the sky?" I asked anxiously.
"Where?" My sister was concentrating on driving in traffic on an unfamiliar street.
"Over those trees on the right. " I pointed, not thinking that she couldn't very well look to where I was pointing while she drove, and not to mention not being able to see anything in the dark.
It looked like a UFO to me. But, could it be the moon, with some sort of strange thing happening with the light?
It was dark early that night, and we got caught in the dark. I had traveled these streets for years, but, now, since I didn't drive, they seemed almost unfamiliar. I could spot some landmarks like familiar buildings, but there weren't any really tall ones in this area. Reading signs was impossible, unless the car stopped and I could look at the sign up close.
It was a relief to spot a familiar intersection with a parking lot on the left. I recognized the balls of fireworks above the parking lot as the strong lights in the parking lot. Rectangles that appeared over a line of what looked like stars, were actually lights of a pharmacy that I used, on the other side of the intersection. The stars were headlights of cars approaching the intersection from the south. Red stars in front of me and to the right were tail lights of cars in our lane, and cars on the north side of the intersection. I could see a little dark green of the grass that divided the street from the sidewalk beside me. A faint light reflected on the woods that had been left on the right side of the intersection. A bit of light shone from a parking lot for some apartments beyond the trees.
Above the intersection, brilliant red, and yellow lights blazed, with washed out green below. I could see a bit of the pipe that held the lights near the pharmacy.
My heart raced a little with excitement at the sight of the strange object in the sky. Maybe it was a helicopter. We moved, but it didn't.
There was a dot of light in the center, surrounded by other dots of light and spokes as you might see on an outer space movie of a space station.
I watched the light all the way to my house, trying to ignore the security lights that appeared as bursts of fireworks. Inside the house, after my sister left, I pulled back the curtains. I summoned my grandson.
"What's that light out there? Can you see it?" I asked, still feeling a little excitement at that strange sight.
"It's a star," he announced and went back to his game on the computer.
"Oh," I said as I closed the curtain. More shapes and designs instead of seeing things as they really are. It was beginning to be annoying, but I told myself that they might make some interesting pictures.
Lights, up close, such as the ones in my yard, or in the same room, looked fine. It was just those that were in the distance that were giving me problems and a show.