Work-in-progress
“The between-being of the beautiful, in the richness of immanent incarnation, communicates the abiding mystery but in no way dispels it.” Desmond, Intimate Universal, 85.
Couples are common
in the park this time of year.
I hear them whisper
between incoming
waves, voices rising, falling.
Strange intimacy!
And I am other
to myself, defined by death.
As the night deepens,
the place grows empty.
One last look at the horizon‘s
cold open spaces.
Pray for me. I pray
for you, whose beauty reminds
my still avid mind.
The poem turns on ‘reminds’ which the reader naturally at first assumes means ‘make aware of again’. the word does mean that but the reader also finds it means more as she comes to the next line describing the poet’s mind. Beauty reconstitutes self. The poet bounded by death finds not that he can cheat death but that through beauty he is given new substance in and through his finitude which enables him both to experience that beauty and to be part of it and a companion to it.