I Live for These Moments

It's Friday - there's no reason I should be this alert, this early in the day, but it's ten past 5 in the morning and I am out watering the jungle that is my front porch.

It's cool. And dry. The first true, nearly-autumnal morning. You can smell in on the air.

And as I step forward to water the primroses in my windowbox, I look up.

Oh.

The sky hasn't been this clear since April. Sparkling out against the endless dark is Venus, the brilliant point of a triangle with Saturn and Regulus (I had to look those two up).

And then I remember it. The words haven't come this easily in numberless months, with so many other things muddying my mind. And for that brief shimmering moment, there is nothing else in the world.

No War. No AIDS. No politics. No agendas. No blue roofs. No lost friends.

Just a moment.

I remember these words:

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Opening Lines to She Walks in Beauty

by George Gordon, Lord Byron