Imperfect Beauty - Missoula, Montana

"...No one but you had sufficient audacity and eyesight to find those clearings where the shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons..."

-from Prospero To Arieln, by W. H. Auden (1907-1973), Selected Poems, page 139


And isn't that one of the glories of autumn, that the benevolent sun beams through rusts and imperfections, these hallmarks of transformation, morphing the subject into a thing of bright beauty. And, oh what we miss when we credit these as anything less.

A rather fitting rabbit trail of thought on Remembrance Day, that arrives at thankfulness.

Remembered - Hamilton, Montana

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below...."

- From "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, May 1915

Selah, Missoula, Montana

Selah (pause, and think calmly of this)

Selah is an appropriate word for this day, set aside as Remembrance Day, Veteran’s Day, or Armistice Day, depending on the country.
 
Pause and think calmly of the benefits of freedom that we should hold so dear.
 
Pause and think calmly of the thankfulness we cradle in our hearts for people who gave so much, so generations to come would not have to live under fear.
 
Pause and think calmly on the many still longing to savour liberty’s goodness, and pray.