Only a brief walk
Just a brief walk today, as I'm still feeling beat from a heavy workout a couple of days ago. Besides fatigue, the cold deters me, and the hesitant spit of rain. A mist has all but taken this morning's beautiful tracery of snow. Some still hides in the northward clefts, though. So I walk with my phone out, hoping to see some interesting shapes.
I think of beauty as the feeling I get when I'm in the presence of something I'm attracted to. Beauty is a dimension of love, of awe, and of all kinds of desire. I feel it when I'm around my wife, in the woods, reading a poem or math problem. It's a definition that helps me to understand how I relate to the world.
Today what I love is melting. In an hour this mist will subsume the finger-path of snow at the base of the trees. The years ahead of me will soak up more of my strength, so that I'll need even more days to recover between workouts. But their fragility doesn't diminish the beauty of the snow, or of this miraculous human body I'm in.
This feeling of evanescent beauty is nothing new, among poets it's as commonplace as snowflakes. But every time it comes over me, it’s like falling in love again.
More posts
