"As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; / [ . . . ] Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: / Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; / Selves -- goes itself; 'myself' it speaks and spells, / Crying 'What I do is me; for that I came'." --Gerard Manley Hopkins

14 April 2005

Moonlight

“So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.” (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God)

October in central Kansas, just before sunrise, the sky deep sapphire. Driving to work, I turn east towards town, then look in my rearview mirror. There, filling the sky between and far above the trees lining the gravel road, sits a harvest moon, just on the horizon’s edge. I could walk the mile to the end of the section and lose myself inside it, its coppery gold warming my chilled heart.

A Tennessee mid-winter morning, the ebony sky and a few luminous stars. Then, as I follow the first bend in the road, an alabaster silk moon, two nights on the wane, dazzles the bare branches of the waiting elms. An ache in the throat, a yearning for beauty I cannot name.

2 comments:

Lucindyl said...

Some of the most graceful and achingly lovely passages I've had the pleasure of reading from your hand.

Would say more, but will soak instead. Thank you for this.

Beth Impson said...

Thank you. I think you may know how much that means to me.

3 weeks till end of semester!

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