I stood for a long time, while the silvery strand grew by inches, spreading itself forward as the sea pulled back, stood there thus transfixed, thus in love, at dawn or at dusk, time between time, neither here nor there, not this, not that...in love, like this, with hint, with vestige, with suggestion.

This is a word that writes its own poem: glimmer, gleaming, gloom, gloam.

I stood thinking of that word Glimmer, how it is the presence of evidence, the evidence of presence. The latches on the treasure chest gleam dully above their secrets, the crown of the sky gleams dully too, perched above the slowly spreading or receding light. That which glimmers is the signal to look, look here more closely, discover what that glimmer is itself a signpost or omen of. It is the thing that signifies something else. It is the sign of a Queen. And she who finds herself in this presence also finds herself in the most enviable position of all, woman on the verge of discovery. She who dares to look finds that she is suddenly Queen of Becoming, glimmering like the moon by her own lamplight, the celestial jewel who herself, miraculously, illuminates all the ways there are of knowing.
• by Anne Markel