By Ana Lisa de Jong —
Everything’s a search for beauty,
for meaning.
Rounding the garden.
Marking the days and the turning seasons.
Drawing circles, making patterns,
ensuring continuity.
Joining gaps, filling in spaces,
that stretch out bare as empty canvases.
Each moment defined
where it eclipses the next.
Days drawn in sketches,
taking on substance in experience.
Hindsight making equations, and
drawing conclusions in significance.
From this we make a life
and determine the value of it.
The circles we draw, the patterns we make,
all depending on our own artistry.
What if beauty had no meaning,
but its own existence?
And each moment was taken and celebrated,
as a singular event that won’t repeat.
Would we see the pattern take shape
without our forcing it?
Like a flower opening, or the dawn rising,
we might remember that some things happen without our efforts.
Beauty
for beauty’s sake.
Moments that carry their own hues,
rather than those we’ve attributed.
Spaces that stretch out in empty brilliance
until the light catches.
And we see all the colours merging
one into the other.
Yes, beautiful moments
that make a life.
Perfectly adequate in themselves,
but which surprise in their continuity.
Both a gift, and a given,
this blessed life that we live in.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
December 2017