All loveliness is as fleeting as the morning dew. Each vignette will fade as do the colors of the sunset. No matter how much my heart longs to hold tightly to the silvery light that flowers in waves across the undulating vastness of the great marsh, it changes even as I reach for it. It is an ephemeral thing that defies even the capture of these words, but it lives forever in my memory.

Each day countless moments of beauty are available to those whose senses are open to the sky, the water, the land and all that dwells there in. But not a single one can we cling to anymore than we can stop the flow of time or cling to a single cord of music. Only the echos linger until they too fade away into a depthless silence and yet in the attic of my memory I retain, like old photographs, snapshots of special moments that create a collage, a kind of scrap book of images to which I can return if only in my dreams.

I take these images and weave them together into the fabric of my soul so that they may warm me when the world grows cold.

I remember the pleasant surprise of November violets pecking out from beneath the fallen leaves. I remember the spring greening of the earth under the azure canopy of the April sky.

My prayer is that I will never be immune to the living poetry of a garden or blind to the colors of an autumn sunset. May I never fail to bear witness to the sienna glow of a woodland in autumn or heedless of the interplay of light and shadow over these gentle hills.

And let me remember always the celestial source of even the most humble aspect of this land that sustains me both in body and soul.