Sudden in a shaft of sunlight*

I was sitting outside a service station on Friday, on the only bit of curb that wasn’t oilstained, waiting for my car to go through Virginia state inspection and idly watching a cop pulling over hapless speeders, when the sun came out and lit up this tree.

*”Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.”
T.S. Eliot The Four Quartets: Burnt Norton