To Rescue Beauty
He could not have known
that she would blindly choose
his street one morning:
heartsick, striding fast
along his sidewalk
to outpace a chill,
wet cheeks turned east
to petition early light.
He could not have known,
pacing the front yard
years before,
debating where to hang
battered wind chimes
picked up for a song
at a dismal garage sale,
that the chosen bough
would someday
channel a sudden gust,
stirring copper rods
to nudge one another
in softly sonorous gongs
just as her ears
and the rest of her
reached that tree.
He could not have known
how tones,
random dyads
borne aloft
on a random breeze—
major, then minor—
would fix her to the earth
in wonder,
how eyes could shroud,
pores could thirst
for resonant waves, how
each chord,
an implication of the unheard
electrifying her scalp,
could convince her that this life
may be worth living,
after all.
He may never know
the import of
one human being’s impulse
to turn right
rather than left,
and another’s impulse
to rescue beauty
and give it a home…
But I do.
This is so rich. The interconnectedness of humanity, all the ways we don't see how our small choices may impact another - an underlying network of interactions; the smallest thing in one moment, may have major implications in another moment.
What we do matters in ways we often will never know. Thank you for this beautiful, beautiful poem, Mary. XOXO
Ah, a small random kindness to an inanimate object, resonating in another soul. Beautiful, Mary.