Beauty Rises

image by glenn buttkus

Beauty Rises

“The future belongs to those who believe in the

beauty of their dreams.”--Eleanor Roosevelt.

Beauty is transcendent, 

                illusionary,

                eternal,

                sadness,

                triumphant,

                momentary, &

                ecstasy.         It can be body art, garish, eclectic

                                tattoos that use flesh as a canvas,

                           a fatal fad, a moment’s folly or love

                      in the rapture of bloom, that may lose

                  its luster as fashion becomes altered

              by cascading, tumultuous decades.

Those people who are born gorgeous as 

             models. stared at by all, once they

                  override their conceits, can come to

                        lament their beauty, often wishing to

                                 merely be an anonymous participant

                                        in the crowded landscape, rather

                                        than something akin to alabaster

                                        on a bronze pedestal;

But it is Nature, in all its guises, whether in a forested glen

swarming with golden & black Monarchs, or atop verdant

foothills at the feet of a fire mountain in early morning, 

while wild strawberry light slides across ermine glaciers,

with Mandarin orange clouds hanging like a general’s 

epaulets on the shoulders of the peak, or at a black beach

during a tropical sunset while the sea’s white caps frost the

smooth tops of infinite rows of waves & frenzied gulls pick

at the stringy pink flesh within yellow crab shells--where we

discover God’s living palette--

and finally, true beauty 

becomes the earnest appreciation

of aging, decay, and oxidation;

midst rotting wood, peeling paint

& rusting metal--where we 

re-evaluate a mature lover’s body,

though no longer hard-muscled,

but still the wondrous encasement

of the loving glow from their eyes,

the tenderness of their touch,

and the undying loyalty, sacrifice,

accommodation & reciprocity that

inhabits every fiber of their essence.

Beauty emerges from

every corner of our life.

resplendent to each. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub