On beauty

What few things we have
we carry with us
our mind and our senses
the capacity to feel
and to express those feelings

beauty is not the blind rose
it knows nothing of our admiration
it blooms amid thorns and bees
and it lives and dies in silence
unaware of its glorious scent

it is we who confer the distinction
of beauty upon the world around us
just as we separate the wolves
from the sheep and all that is good
from what is not

and love

love in all its soft and subtle glory
the greatest beauty of all
how the eye is besotted
with the loving world around it
the eyes and the lips
and the tongue and the hands
that touch and are touched
man woman or child
the greatest beauty of all

John Lyons