Apr 15, 2007

I Saw a Plastic Bag after The Mall

There's so much beauty in a plastic bag,
I can't stop looking at it, any more
than I can stop tasting sugar or sugar
cubs, pancakes with honey, as if the way
it carves circles into the air when it traces
its own impossible-to-tell-next pattern
is a way that, inevitably, binds you:
in the wind, it rises
and it swirls, is swelling with shape
now, now not, as if having a life of its own
where it falls, where it rises, where it brushes the ground;
hand-shakes the sky. There's so much beauty
in the plastic bag, I can't stop looking at it
without feeling I let go of what we for
so long, but never truly, have called beauty.
I can't turn away as if it never happened,
as if it never happened to me.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This reminds me of a scene from the film, "American Beauty," where the boy next door films a bag moving in the wind. Very touching poem.

James said...

Hi, Christine. So glad you stepped by and commented. Made me smile.

Have a good day,
James