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Beauty is
True beauty is an experience of awe, it is a momentary recognition where the interconnectedness of everything becomes clear as it sits on the edge of chaos, of knowing the chaos and the precarious tilt towards it, inside of it, but also knowing that chaos for what it is – an illusion.
It is a transient intimacy with truth, when the layers of life are exposed, revealed in a completed majesty. It is a fleeting experience, a halt in existence that our temporal selves cannot maintain. It arrives unexpectedly, when looking at the face of a child, an old person’s hands, an animal’s tenderness to another outside of its kind. Or when knowing the starlight patterns, forest root fungal patterns, brain electrical patterns are one in the same patterns, that mountain ridges and heartbeat ridges join in identical rhythms, that what is in the forest is in the branch is in the leaf, and that singing is simply opening up, letting in, then letting out.
Beauty is being in love. It catches our breath, brings peace, uncovering perfect symmetry before dissipating with a thinning intensity. It shields the heart in hope, it is a glimpse of God, is bigger than dying, than death, though denies nothing. It shocks us with a sense of synchronicity, and for a moment, seeing it, we return to the source, restored.
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Copyright © 2017 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
First published in “Peacock Journal” October 2016
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You can listen to the poem by clicking below:
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