The Search for Beauty

Such exquisite beauty and sadness in the world.  

It is the knife that pierces my heart most cleanly, 

two sides of one blade.  It may manifest through 

music, literature, or the visual arts motivating my 

attempts to participate in it as best I can, whether

strumming on a guitar and trying not to strain 

while singing or maybe writing something that 

I hope moves someone or taking a photograph 

to capture the same sad but beautiful effect.  

I see these images everywhere and everywhen.

I would love to be a great writer or musician

but it is the visual aspect that comes most 

effortlessly to me and the eye of my heart.

And whatever it is it has to be enough for now.

I am old enough to have squandered too much

time in the pursuit of pleasurable things that 

are transient and too easily attained without 

the single-mindedness needed for greatness.

***

December Sunday

The drive to and from work
on a dreary December Sunday
when the world has died or
at least gone into a deep slumber.

The tall weeds and slender trees
flow by gray-brown and naked
while flocks of birds fly from
place to place listless and cold.

A time to be alone and enclosed in
my shiny red box, coming or going,
a peaceful bit of purgatory before
reaching either heaven or hell.

***

The Train

 

My grandpa loved trains and when I see them on occasion I think of him.  He was a peculiar man, possibly even eccentric.  He spent the last half of his eighty years divorced from my grandma and living as a single man, working as a janitor, and habitating in various rented spaces before transitioning to a nursing home when dementia set in in his seventies.  

He was gruff, especially to women and children, but as I grew older I began to appreciate him more.  Like all of us, he was who he was and had been formed by forces mostly outside of his control.  He boiled Quaker oats on the stove top every morning and added a pinch of salt.  Lunch and supper were always accompanied by a slice of buttered white bread.  

He kept to his rituals until the inexorableness of his cognitive decline robbed him of them.  I visited him at the nursing home when I could.  I would take my college books down there to work on assignments and study.  I don’t think he knew who I was but seemed appreciative of the company and sometimes unexpected wisdom would manifest in his lost thoughts.

I won’t lie, there was a very attractive nurse there that made it easier to spend time with him.  She and I lived in two completely different social spheres but it was nice to see her smile.  I once challenged my grandpa to a race down her wing.  I took off running half in jest  but when I looked around he was right on my tail.  Her lovely eyes registered surprise if not alarm.

And the train has come a long way since then.  I watch it speed over my head on the way home.  A lifetime of change and choices have come and gone like those coupled railroad cars flying by.  I wonder where they are headed at such breakneck speed?  I sometimes wish life would slow down and let me catch my breath so I can remember who I am.  

***

The Moving Monolith

 

It’s familiar yet alien 

with the caring coming

through in solid stone.

Somewhat like Ray’s 

mysterious Martians 

hapless to time and 

desecration by men

who visit and forget

kindness due to fear.

A lesson we would

do well to learn and

burn into our brains.

***