Why do poets and photographers love fleeting things? Angled shafts of sunlight piercing a mass of clouds. A rainbow flashing from dragonfly wings. Water drops beading like shards of glass.
The fluttering shape of a sycamore’s shade. The sun sinking into its reflection In a purple bay. Smoke’s shadow. The rayed Curve of a finger reaching for perfection.
Whatever churns, bursts, rocks, flies, Foams, flickers, roils, evades In pigments of impermanent dyes We try to fix before it fades
Once I mourned the endless dying Of here and now, the present always past Elegized each moment, sighing Beauty is loss and can never last.
But now I think I had it wrong. In fact (I learned this from an artist’s eye) Fleeting beauty reappears faster than we react, At the speed of a daydream flashing by.
All around, light coalesces into form, Form explodes into light, And we live lavishly inside this storm If we can learn to see it right.
Beauty multiplies, tapering, swelling: Reshaping, reforming, now familiar, now strange. This gaudy blur in which we’re dwelling Is the permanence of change.
This is still a work in progress. Comments very welcome.