Bonsai II

Great beauties there are in the world
But not all are large.

Some, of course, overwhelm us with length,
Breadth, depth beyond calculation
Bearing in their vastness a story
One can tell only with the
Pure forms of mathematics
Tracing wave and particle
Into the impossibly remote past.

Some only an angstrom’s length,
Embellish a work beneath the surface of sight
Their careful, improbable symmetry
Visible only to those few
So trained to unmovable observation
They can no longer see what
Is clearly written in
The delicate design.

But here is one we can easily apprehend and love,
Possessing in its kindly scale
All the organic warmth and wisdom
We would embrace
Suggesting many years lived
Recalling a weightiness rooted in
Solid earth and reaching
Beyond itself.

Like a simple, unexpected, unjustifiable
Act of kindness, lost in the order of magnitudes
Of the great universal signs,
But all the more clearly enlightening
The space where we actually live.

Sandy Shugart © 2005

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