Monday, May 9, 2022

poem

 Beautiful

Some people are beautiful 

Only when they smile

Others seem loveliest

When wracked with sorrow


We all let down our guard, at some point

Show the thing we think is sacred.

When this happens some of us

Let you take what you want.

Others only let you borrow 


I used to think

You had to be one or the other;

The one who looks at the camera

Or the one who turns away.


I don't know what I am

I refuse to inhabit a face

My smiles are subterfuge.

I look ridiculous when joyous

And wrecked when I cry


There are two rational responses to all this.

One is to say that everyone is always beautiful

But it takes a lifetime to know

Exactly where to look for it, and how 


The other is to say beauty is a fiction,

That nothing is ever beautiful or ugly,

That the so-called beautiful things you see

Are just the times when everything false

Falls away and a certain glance


Captured at a certain time of day

Becomes a tremulous dewdrop

Hanging from a bent 

Blade of grass,

Just before it falls.


5/9/22

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