4.18.2009

On a napkin in a pizza restaurant


One day last year I was eating in a pizza shop in Charleston and written on a napkin, I found this poem.

" I know the moon is disturbing
to stand beneath the shower of its brilliance
and have absolutely nothing in your pocket
except maybe pocket lint or the few pennies you've managed to collect off the cold concrete,
hoping because they are heads up,
something about your life might change irreversibly,
and how enough of those pennies might buy you something,
or nothing,
an air conditioned bus ride into the next town where men and women pass you by while pressing their coats against their bodies,
as if you were nothing more than a cold breeze:
How if you stood beneath the moon,
it might convince you there's just not enough beauty in the world to go around."

While I find the poem beautifully written, image provoking and visually tasteful, I must disagree with its content.
I must plead that in fact the world in its entirety is beautiful. How each fleck of dust when caught in the right light can sparkle on its own. How every child has the beautiful mark of its maker. How each day begins and ends with the flame of a medium sized star we call the sun. Life is what you allow it to be. I can decide to burn like a sparkler or dim like a half lit stick of incense.

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