i believe in beauty.
i see it in the small blossoms clinging to trees as the sky gets bluer and the air warmer
and in the dry leaves scattered around the base of their trunks months later
i believe in beauty,
i see it in the human who desires what is pleasant,
the human who independently brings a touch more kindness into this world,
and in the human whose unanswered questions release a bitter child from within,
the human who hurts because they hurt.
how natural is it to be afraid existing in an unreasonable universe,
how natural to be tossed around the rolling and crashing waters of life
like a panicked cat.
i believe in beauty,
i see it etched into the surface of every hand written letter i’ve received
and leaking out of my grandmother’s eyes when she remembers what she loved about
her son Thomas.
and he was beautiful too--
his eyes told the weather, they shone like the sun or darkened with a silent storm
and when he made music, the world stopped to listen to this foreign and wordless language
he used to articulate what existed in his private corner of the universe.
he crumbled with the grace of a star:
bright and alone,
his very existence still shining through the thick darkness of death, so natural and abstract a
state
he is alive again when is Telecaster, so worn down from his constantly callused fingers,
makes music again.
he is alive when his brother and daughter stand together afront his grave,
arms around each other with teary eyes because it hurts to love someone
whose eyes you don’t get to see anymore
he is alive in my eyes when i can feel the years he spent in my grandmother’s basement
making an old piano sound young again--
i know this because i see him there
i believe in beauty,
i see it in death because i remember my father's life, i remember the blossoms
that preceded the dry leaves scattering the base of tree trunks
