From To See a World ~ Photo by Kristen Tenzek
Beauty is Everywhere
Charlotte speaks to me of a poet
who believes life is beautiful
Canyons and scorpions Beautiful
the sea and beaches Beautiful
lips and hair beautiful
stone ice and stars beautiful
streams and meadows beautiful
sun space and earth beautiful
green eyes and kisses beautiful
waterfalls birds beautiful
clouds and moonlight beautiful
silence and firelight beautiful
roses nightingales beautiful
stone and gardens beautiful
castles and wind beautiful
rocks and Earth beautiful
Beethoven and his spheres
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
~ Russell Vidrick
The Waterthrush
Grey rainfall on the waterthrush stream,
I waded the limestone glade of coneflowers
in their purple summer burning.
Calm as moss white sycamores offered
a lunar course to follow the hidden sun
whose children hanged from bags of deerskin
with mother’s marrow on their tongues
awaiting the hunt.
Two crossed sticks lid the natural well pool
inside the rocks hiding the frogs
from the quiet night heron staring downward
as a vapor bathed
memories of the irretrievably lost.
I sat with a match to recreate the swans
drowned in my palms
as rain and flame fed from the lower sky.
~ John Swain
Photo by Ashley Bovan