captive of the dusk-rhyme

The weather--breath of Autumn, charm of summer, golden-in-between--has been splendid, and the glory of it holds the whole day through as I work. Driving home with Dad, we take a back-country route and the evening gathers around us.

The oyster-light beauty of a limpid-eyed dusk.

Frail shades of pink dying the West and a lone feather above--an eagle's pinion, carved of gold-whetted cloud-shard.

Uplands chasing the vagrant light, downlands...mingled shadow and warmth. The broad bands of trees dark and silent against the wash of beauty--beautiful in their own solemn way pencilled, as it were, upon the drapery of rose and amber.

Home-words, good words lingering in my thoughts from the book I'd just laid aside--its delight faded only with the glory of the earth at elf-light.
Such simple, earth-rhythm glory. Glory of heaven and earth shouting praises to their creator. Quiet glory of a world turning--moment by moment--a shade lovelier than it had been yet a moment before. Hay-sweet breeze, dove-light jinking on the meadow and there on the edge of that eagle-feather.

It has not always been this way--I know. I have only been privileged to see this turning of the night for a few years of my life--for the dusk-rhyme is never heard above the roar of the city where I lived so long. I breathe deep, long, lasting, and lift a thought of thanks--heart too full to frame in words; but He knows. He means for it to feel this way--this pain and joy mixed in the cup of Beauty.

The joy glimmers coal-wise in the center of the pain, and the pain springs till my heart aches and throbs. It will not always be this way--I am grown. I may marry and the man I marry may take me back to the city. Moth-wing terror flutters in my breast--to be trapped--I, akin more to this beauty and linked more to this land than I had known before tonight...a thrall in the confines of a city, barred from viewing the turning of the night in its muted, pearlescent shades.

It may be. It very well may be. Never to sense the gloaming? Never to watch its richness unfold petal by petal except on that rare occasion when I might find myself home?

My heart again throbs and joy mingles strongly with the pain once more. Blue hope, center of the flame, whirl in the shell. Home has my love...but my Love shall be my home.

But here...now...I am captive of the dusk-rhyme. Intoxicated, suspended, transfixed by the glory.