Sic transit gloria mundi

 

The oppressive heat we've come heir to for some time now tends to flatten morning skies into something beautiful but plain, something almost oppressively tangerine. It's beautiful, but that's all there is. That kind of sky proclaims just more heat.

This morning, things have changed. The robins out back are happy as larks right because that sky--I just snapped the picture--turned inky for a while and we became the thankful recipients of a cloudburst, not enough rain to quench the drought (I think I may call it that, although it's not official that I know of), but enough to wet the earth's whistle anyway, a sip of wonderful, beloved rain on the parched throat of the earth, enough wet at least to turn out nightcrawler. Those robins are having a ball, busy hunting.

I don't leave home all that often anymore to shoot pictures. The real goal of my old ventures out into open country was simply to look for beauty, beauty itself having unimagined powers to charm the soul. The moment I get up in the morning, all I need to do these days is step out on the deck to know whether the dawn is going to be notable or drab. These days, just about every morning lately, the eastern skies are a vast orange canvas, beautiful its own right, but it's clouds, like this morning, that lend drama to the dawn--like this, same deck, same eastern sky with a good deal more drama.

I've come to believe the Playwright is less scrupulous about what we call him than we are or I've been. So I doubt he'll mind if I refer to him as King Midas because he certainly does have the touch. Every night lately, he comes out to glove the world in gold.

We've got but one cone flower out right now--a herald of an army coming soon, believe me. It's not the only flower out back right now, but there is not many yet, especially in the prairie. Still, on these hot days, King Midas does really breath-taking moments every evening, moments when the western sun lowers into the horizon and shines through whatever havoc he's raised--or we have--throughout the day. The world turns gold. Lengthening shadows give what's there a dappled look that relieves the heavy flatness of a roaring midday sun. 

These days, that's about the only time I get out the camera. The light is perfect for portraiture, so I do my best. I stepped out back on Saturday night, the snoot of my camera a close-up lens, and tried to catch what the light was bountifully offering. 

This is the kind of thing I found.

Not until I caught this flowering bush in that close-up lens did I notice that its flashiness was--it hurts to say this--in decline. Look for yourself. The delicate petals are getting darkening.  Here's another.

 Makes  you weep. This. . .

. . .up close, is this. . .

It was--how should I say it?--discouraging. In the perfect twilight, that told me life is transitory--"only one life will soon be past," the plaque upstairs reminded me almost daily--"only what's done for Christ will last."

But, heck, I'm 73 years old. My petals don't shine. But the truth of the matter, as anyone will tell you is that there's still some beauty left just outside my back door. As people continue to tell me, my wife who's just a month shy of 73, is just as beautiful as she ever was. Just keep shooting, I told myself. What you see isn't awful, it's just what it is. "Our flowers," Poe wrote in one of his depressing little ditties, "are only flowers." But they're still flowers.

Okay. We'll not escape it, I get that. But who's to say there isn't some beauty remaining.

So I kept shooting, and I'm not a bit reluctant, this sweet and rainy morning, of sharing them either. So tonight, when King Midas arrives, I'll shuffle out back again. There'll be more tonight, always more beauty.