A Thing of Beauty ...

I have been including a picture in the beginning of each post. In my travels on the Internet, I have been amazed by the beauty of the photography posted there. In fact, I am amazed by beauty itself. In any form it takes. And we humans have diverse ways of sensing beauty. The sweet scent of lily of the valley, roses, lilacs, fill the nose with beauty in spring and summer. The crisp scent of apples, the acrid scent of burning leaves in the fall. Or, at this time of year, the fresh scent of fresh-cut evergreen. The scent of the onset of snow.

The ear seems not to believe the magnificence of a Beethoven symphony, the intrigue in a Mozart sonata, or the quiet dignity of a Faure pavan. Or just the simple beauty of the scraping of bare limbs against a windowpane, the muffled richness of sleigh bells on a snowy winter night, or the innocent laugh of a child.

The eye marvels at the flame in a Turner landscape, the fog of a Monet harbor or the reflection in a still Monet pool. The rich burnt gold of an autumn sunset, the orange round of a harvest moon or the icy stillness of a winter one. The flickering shapes of figures in an El Greco painting, writhing as if in dance.

Run your fingertips over aged brick, the fuzzy throat of a bearded iris, the smooth flesh of the hollow at the small of a lover's back. Then try to describe it. Hard, isn't it?

An old saying states that a picture is worth a thousand words. But, as the next lyric of the song says "Then why can't I paint you?" Maybe it isn't the amount of words that paints the picture, but the choice of them. And the sound of them. And again I work my way back to poetry.

One night, I tried to paint such a picture, not of a winter evening in Central Park, but a winter evening in Eatontown, New Jersey. I have tried and tried again to capture the beauty of nature, not on film, but on paper. It is a labor of love, and a labor of a lifetime. Each time I try to capture a season or a scene, words seem to fall short. But writers keep on trying. And so will I.

Winter Comfort
Christopher Bogart

As if by magic,
They appear -
Fluffy white,
And drifting down
From the deep black night
Of the winter sky,
Only to fall soundlessly,
As they gather on the ground below.

The muffled crunch of rubber tires
Punctuate the stillness of the night,
Impressing the road with treaded tracks
In the softly fallen snow.

The world of the suburban night
Slowly becomes blanketed
In the cold wet cotton
Of the winter sky.

Listen!
You can almost hear
Falling flakes
As they race,
Helter-skelter,
To their place on the ground.

Soon the world
Is enveloped in silence,
Enfolded
In the dark thick walls
Of night.

Hush then!
Drift into dreams,
Enfolded in soft cotton seams,
Enveloped warmth in comforter and down,
As the quickly falling snow
Tumbles to the ground,
Blanketing the land
Without a sound.