So strange to praise beauty, to honor that which attracts. It is like praising the sky because you like it, like praising your tastes and feelings. Pulse and plumage, weather and feathers and the telltale toll of time's passing: all of these lade the taste for beauty. Evolutionary imperatives towards art and patterns, the hunger of ancient genes that simmers beneath all these words and rituals, the need to breed and bond and treasure whatever can not last. I watch as one might watch the horizon for ships or riders, eyes heavy and riven with the dusk. Neoteny and symmetry and that bright sign of wit burning in a clever eye--. The stretch of shadows measuring the distance between day and night. All that I am so distinct from and grateful for, epigraphs for the host and the haunting, the breadth and depth of so much longing.