Absent Beauty

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I usually cringe at the idea of writing explicitly topical poetry, not because I am repelled by the medium, but because I lack the skills to execute it in any way you wouldn’t have to call “ham-fisted”.

In spite of this, I wrote this poem a few weeks ago when considering that satisfaction and joy (along with peace, love, and, yes, beauty) can often be found, not in the presence of things, but in their absence. Think:

-silence

-space

-a clear horizon line

-a clean dinner plate

Considering the Christmas season, and in light of self-reflection on the year at its close, I tried to capture what it means to behold the beauty of nothing, of the lack of something. This is no anti-Capitalist screed aimed at guilting you for your presents (I mean, I’m already enjoying my Christmas pajamas) but instead is an invitation to consider the gift of emptiness.

Hope you enjoy!

(More importantly, the holidays. But if you like the poem, that’s nice too.)

 

Dealing Mostly in Transformations

given a paper clip,
and ample time to twirl it
between idle hands eager
to pass time avoiding the past,

a heart becomes a spiral
becomes the number “4” becomes
a spiral rivaling the abstract
aspirations of picasso.

in the hands of another artist
(with a taste for both the subtle
and the theatrical) whose business
deals mostly in transformations,

a crooked heart may bend,
from a thin mess of mass and breath,
into a man, knelt down before
his maker, before his God.

Haiku III

from straw, salvation:
a light born to bear man’s sin
in cattle’s food trough