3.10.2010

Beauty

I'm on a quest, a hunt,
to find something beautiful everyday, and document it.
I believe, deeply, that this world is full of beauty,
that beauty reveals itself to open eyes, that
all places, even cities, even Hong Kong,
are just waiting to be seen.
Some people say this city is made of
concrete, of bamboo, of buses and smoke and money.
I say it is made of people--
people working, talking, loving, growing, hoping, dying.
And what's not beautiful about that?
Two things I saw today--
men taking down 28 floors of scaffolding. Patiently,
steadily, untying the canvas straps and dropping
bamboo down to waiting hands.
Climbing with no harness, just bodies that know what to do.
And this:
A man kneeling outside the hidden bathrooms behind the tennis courts, the ones where we saw Venus.
Before him lie the butts and half-smoked cigarettes of a celebrity-loving crowd.
He unrolls the paper with determined hands and
pours the tobacco into a tin. He is patient and anything but steady.

2 comments:

L. DeAne Lagerquist said...

Monte, An excellent discipline. And these two sightings are fine indications of beauty that might easily be missed unless we try to look at the world with eyes of love. Thank you for the example. DeAne

L. DeAne Lagerquist said...

I've been reading Mary Oliver of late. If you don't know her lovely poem, Praying, I urge you to look for it. You and she seem to be on the same quest. LDL