Ding an sich

February trickles in slowly with  promises of sunlight here and there, glimpses of azurer skies and longer sunsets. I remember once sitting in a train on a summer evening  somewhereabouts Yorkshire opposite a lovely lady who had no clue how lovely she was. She sat engrossed reading a book, her deep auburn locks drifting across her ivory forehead. Her eyes  wistful and pear like, intently following the lineage of words. Her lips curved  in a silent smile. The long orange hands of the dusk sun, capacious and bright, travelled all across the pewter clouds,  past the woods, past the yellowing grass and streams of quavering water, through the sealed glass onto her face, making her soft nose gleam like a pearl.  In that moment she was just perfect.  She was just there, alone and oblivious of the whole universe, so subtle and sublime. With neither future nor past. A Ding an sich. My heart , swallowed a sea. Like a  moment of  eternity consummated in a frame festooned against the constancy of life, she looked so unbearably beautiful. She was, in that minute an  Edward Hopper painting alive.