moments

 A soft, chill embrace, the midnight wind 

Touching, whispering a comprehensible sensation that leaves the skin flushed and tingling.

And the yip of coyotes calling to one another in a frantic cacophony,

The distant splash of waterfowl, the bovine lowing, bringing a life into the cold night.

Stars beyond counting wink down as if to co-conspire on the cold dirt road.

It culminates, it amalgamates itself into this,

A moment.  

Fleeting, quickly passing into the fading ether of the past,

Yet imprinted now.

Edges fuzzy in recall, the details vaguely lost, yet the moment remains.

Long after the path is spent and days have changed, it will remain.  

Indelible on the canvas of the soul,

As much a feeling as an image, perhaps more so.  

And this moment, this hazy snapshot in time,

It is to be cherished, to be coveted.  

Long it will offer respite.

When the whirlwind of the people and places that tear at us all leave the soul tattered and trembling,

Deep into the quiet vaults of the soul one looks and draws it out.

Tattered from wear, from the frequent caress of gentle memory

It, the moment, will bring warmth against the cold.

Will bring peace against the raging chaos.

And in time, if we are wise,

We will see.  

Life is not beautiful because it is punctuated by these moments.

Life is beautiful because it is lived in these moments.  

Guard the moments.  Seek them out.  Live them in memory over and again.

For when the curtain closes, those moments will be all we really ever had.