On Beauty and Catastrophe

Flowers from my garden

I don’t want to miss out on beauty. I know it’s all around me, but I forget. I get caught up in bills, and worries and the general mayhem of thoughts circling around, worrying me in and out of awareness. I suppose this desire to attend to beauty is why I write poems, take pictures. I’m trying to tell myself––Look here! Look here!  Every moment is a daylily that opens and drops its petals. I take pictures of the clouds because they keep moving from one kind of beauty to another. I want to know that change can mean just another formation, not disaster. Don’t we fall into that? Into thinking change is a catastrophe? Change of marriage, health, finances. Even a boon can come accompanied by worry about how to handle the new situation. Winning the lottery and intentionally losing a hundred pounds can be as jarring as misfortune. Who’s to say what’s good news or bad?

But beauty is another matter.