Beauty crowds me till I die

You’re driving home alone. Your mind is still caught up in the world of movement you’ve left behind. The connections you felt with the other dancers, the subtle yet huge energy thrumming beneath the improvisation, the loosening of muscles over-tight from a week of living. You explore the feeling of your body relaxing into the seat, your core shivering beautiful fatigue and your legs just now finding and feeling again the muscles you spent the past two hours letting go. Your body is calm and entirely at ease. Your thoughts are still.

The car vibrates beneath you and around you. The radio hums quietly, the voice speaking like a comforting blanket of sound in the background of your mind. Your window is open, and the dusky air blows in across your face, brushing your hair aside. You can smell the night, like oak leaves and damp grass and starlight. It is cool as you breathe it in. The sky is clear and deep, the starts like specks of heaven about the soft face of the moon.

The headlights of the car flash dimly over the ground before you, and you forget your high beams until you drive into an overhanging tree tunnel and can’t see more than five feet ahead. It’s almost a shame to turn them on, but you do anyhow. A luna moth flutters up from the road and disappears into the trees. Fairy lights twinkle from the ditches on either side of the pavement, and every pool and stream rings with music, a chorus of mystic summertime. There is life everywhere, and you pass by and through it. A part of it.

And suddenly you understand Emily Dickinson’s words.

Beauty crowds me till I die,
Beauty, mercy have on me!
But if I expire today,
Let it be in sight of thee.

 

You have to pull the car over when you reach the top of the Hill, because your face is wet.