On Beauty

Open your eyes.
Look around you.
Look through a photographers lens.
Just look.




I did this and watched my daughters golden hair swinging from side to side as she ran, in her own penguin like way. I wanted time to slow down so I could savour every lock catching the light, reflecting the sun. I wanted to hold the golden tones and feel them run through my fingers, sure that they would simultaneously be heavy and soft to my touch. The waves of her hair and its fluidity filled my heart. If I could hold them, I could keep them and save them.

I saw a feather drift through my back door on the afternoon breeze. Time was, I would have tutted and tossed it in the bin. Instead I held it up to the light and turned it into the sun transfixed by the amazing regularity of each barb and how the light was distorted as it passed through this simple, discarded piece of anatomy. Such uniformity creating the perfect tool with which a bird can fly and look down on me looking at it's feather.

It rained. The smell of green was wonderful, no beautiful. The earth gave up its fresh rich scent that held me, smiling, and sent me into the garden to touch leaves, lift flowers, brush raindrops from abandoned toys and reach into the sandpit to feel its cool dimpled surface. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to be pulled outside. My bare feet, with grass and earth stuck to my toes, woke me and led me to get my camera.

Beauty is there to be appreciated. But there isn't always time to indulge in it.

I will make time.


Inspired by Josie at Sleep is for the Weak and the Writing Workshop .