By d (goddess@gibbed.com)
Date: 11 June 1998

poetry

Its more than words on a page, more than rhyming and proper spelling and getting your thoughts out. Its looking out the window on your morning bus ride and seeing the beauty in the skyscrapers and bridges and cars that you see every morning without really seeing them.

Its knowing that everything is beautiful, even if its not pretty. Its those moments when time stops and I look at you and I know that I will never stop falling into you. Into the beauty that is within you, even when you haven't said anything nice at all in days. Even though you proclaimed to me yesterday morning that our relationship isn't fun anymore.

Its the longing, the need, to attempt to capture those moments when you see how beautiful things really are. Hurrying to work so I can type out that longing. Ignoring the pile of mail, the voice mail that I know I should check, ignoring the fact that I haven't even had my coffee yet.

Do you understand that longing?

I feel sometimes that I am alone in these thoughts. All the people around me, living in "the most beautiful city in the world" just like me, do they see the beauty in everyday things? Poetry is more than just trees blowing in the wind in Stanley Park, its more than the ocean rushing to meet the land in Steveston. Its the guy who owns the little cafe I get my coffee at every morning. His dedication, his love for his work, his attempts to get to know my routine.

Its the look in your eyes when you talk about moving to a new place where you can be free of your facist boss and low paying job. I think sometimes you believe that money is what makes life beautiful. I wish sometimes that you would see that life is beautiful no matter where its lived, or how its lived.

I wish sometimes I could get you to read a book, or a poem, or even to look at me like you look at the words of that job offer in Virginia.

I wish sometimes you were a poet, too.

Maybe then you'd understand the longing.. the need to capture perfection in a word, in a song, in a child, in a look.. in your heart.