Pausing at a late time

I imagine the house full of people. Words sweep his face like gestures; hands wash the air in gentleness. He stands between me and the chandelier talking to someone out of sight-- at his slight balancing movement a ray bursts under his arm, behind his head (as seen from relative shadow). Words are notes, musical letters.

The antique-red walls would have fingerprints from the children. I could only see them from this angle. The dining chair with its back to me, strings dangling from the booster seat, is excruciatingly beautiful because my friend sits next to me plucking a guitar.

The present is all but a memory; the greatest beauty of a moment is the vintage of its passing. It keeps a person up far into the night, trying to remember what is happening a moment ago.

But to rightly squander time is to inhale it like a sweet aroma, to swallow it like a first meal in a week, to run over it barefoot like it's a perfect green lawn, to forget it like forgetting yourself, to love it like your first breath.

Maybe in the eternal sunshine of graduation one can taste and see every facet of beautiful memory.

It's just that beauty and joy don't collocate forever in a teakettle waiting to be poured. Beauty is Northern Lights heaping themselves above the sky, joy is facing fear. Beauty and joy are in the utter distraction and awareness of sanctification.

Letting not the emptiness of a false present past rob me of sleep: might dreams be fearless and forward-pacing.