washwords

My love meets me on the Hill after a Saturday class. In the mist of four o clock and the salt of margaritas, he takes my mittened hand and we walk.

Around the Capitol. Literally around it. From the House buildings on the south, walking north but into the park, along the east front. The yellow warm of the lights hitting the moon-colored marble columns. It’s breathtaking. Truly, deeply, breathtaking. I had forgotten how much so. and like, as an intern here so many summers ago, I feel lucky.

[“The U.S. Capitol at Night” on Flickr by DoYouMindtheGap]

Lucky, not only for the obvious, living in this country, in comfort and prosperity, having friends and family and hope and heart… but the littler things, too. Living HERE, in D.C., where a class is held at the Library of Congress, where I can walk with my sweetie on the misty silver path and be almost alone in the still, clear light of the night. And not only that, I know the House side from the Senate side, and he remembers that a light on means “in session” and we talk of coming back to sit in the main reading gallery at the Library with banker lamps blazing to read and study and think, together, and with the others but apart…in our own thoughts and research and misty paths. And some of the paths are as important as the people dreaming them up think they are. And some are more so, but they are bright and beckoning and true.

We come full circle, back to where we entered, and hand-in-hand pass back under the winter branches and whispered cool. We may come back, we may not, a week from tomorrow, when the energy blazing will be of a far different hue: rich, and loud and echoing. And no less  breath-taking, no less sacred. Either way, we’ve been here, and we are lucky.

Washington, capitol, sacred, beauty, lucky, breathtaking