The Diamond Life

By Hank Edson

The first wisdom came in the pride of sunlight, watching the dazzling rays perform their miracles of passage. The brilliant diffusions, the quiet reflections: much more than a mirror, this body of facets in smooth perfect precision. Its solid hallways, entrances of content, windows of crystallized vision. The thought becoming the thing, over and over again; not transversion, but transcendence, the perfect medium for light’s pure energy. Unified in a coexistence lucid but stable, who could say which entered which? Was it the light that grew more endowed, more abstract, a spontaneous lumination? Or was it the jewel’s impossible concentration, the finesse of the diamond life, the absolute strength in its rigid sensitivity, knowing each as each, a meaning for the whole identity? Its prophetic evolution simultaneously organic, rational, hinting beyond at values still indiscernible in its untried depths, what we call the emotional. Turning before me, one breath of its beautiful, sharp vapor to let the vital flow of my whole life’s blood.