but a moment

I stood … on a mountain not nearly the highest but the air was clean … seraphic cold, but not bone-chilling keen, that it restore the marrow and course the blood more acutely it sharpened my senses and I listened for The Voice … the wind’s whisper changes, you see the higher you climb there was only evergreen where I stood - young, stunted by the harsher bounds thin, stiff needles splitting the air into higher-pitched phrases (not leafy flutters) as if paying for the privilege with their strength … and their dance - easy, hypnotic - like the hips of a Shirabyoshi swaying to wooden flutes but theirs, a divine performance meant for heaven alone I, but a lucky voyeur … how many numberless moments have passed as such, sacred instances of indescribable beauty that the sky, alone, gives witness to? we humans are placed here to appreciate, and yet a billion such winks of elegance transpire every second that no eye ever sees and they happen anyway … does that not make them even more valuable? those brief moments - standing on a peak or awaiting a desert’s dawn … a butter moon dancing a-sea or cold rain on the face … the kiss of the sun on your skin or the smile of a loved-one’s joyous affection … they are miracles, ALL miracles we have been created to give worth to and yet most of them are wasted … most are lost to indifference and given to time spent hoping for things that never come … I am not worthy of such loveliness yet it was placed at my feet all the same and perhaps … perhaps just the realization of this MAKES me worthy perhaps appreciation is its own payment and my standing on that mountain at that particular time in that particular state-of-mind wasn’t coincidence … perhaps I wasn’t a voyeur at all but rather the object of a very simple … singularly extraordinary … blessing. Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, April 24, 2024