Beauty

(From the biking philosophers’ notebook)

Something compels you

Perhaps the way a substance

moves beneath your fingertips

and you can mold it

Perhaps the interplay of laws

as seen in intersecting ripples

Perhaps the strength of structure

and the genius of form

You must engage with it

You have to notice

Or maybe it’s the summer-long progression

of how a seed pod forms and opens out

Maybe the way a person thinks or moves

Maybe the tracks of time, the marks of history

Or the recurring changes through each day

No matter—

When a thing calls you

and you follow it because you must

And you throw yourself into the quest

to really master, really grasp it

And insist on holding on until it changes you,

You bring forth beauty.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 17, 2012