civil twilight -

we just met yet ... I know you as myself, I know you before now, before then, before time bounding a meadow through the dew of eventide careful business for a muggy summer eve a jelly jar to fill with fireflies it was there ... then the emerald-gold spark that shimmers your gaze it held me rapt, as it does now a large one, caught - winking me through the slits in my fingers much too delightful to be confined to a glass prison so I spread my hand and let it twinkle away somehow my child's heart knew it was ... more grander, more weighty, more important the color stayed ... within. ~ then ... years later the same exquisite hues and glow in an instant, come and gone last remnant of a Caribbean sunset, melting bursting green and bright, wide across the horizon cumulus clouds shattering sunlight into golden shards like the gild columns of Olympus, fallen rolling, glimmering as they tumble to ruin or giant ropes of precious metal, weaving the heavens splashed brief with a flare of chartreuse an instant only, but an instant blooming in elegance so beautiful that it seemed a phantom surely, in all my wits, I must have imagined it yet, it remained within ... until now there, swimming your eyes beyond expression. ~ once more, I found it drowning in middle age madness searching for answers to The Question yes, THAT question ... the ONLY question crossing an ocean, it matters not which again, Sol had just set, without a cloud or wisp of weather when, upon the far reach, the moon rose like a madman mocking the sun in its greatest breadth and boundary so bright and yellow that the swells turned transparent like jade the colors, too, as water and moonlight swirled glistening and turning, scintillating like some priceless gem, untold it was YOU - the eyes that hold me now - there! I was breathless, taken, plunging that beauty in delirium just as I had all those years before ... as I am NOW for you are the standard, the archetype - the constant, the measure the reason for those moments of wonder and awe ... you, the brightest star of dusk and dawn ... my civil twilight. ~ 1st Place in the "Best Free Verse 2019" Poetry Contest, John Hamilton, Judge & Sponsor. ~ 1st Place ~ in the "Pick A Title - Free Verse" Poetry Contest, Edward Ibeh, Judge & Sponsor.