“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”¹

Beauty will rise, even from the trash heap,
given eyes to see, rightly, with the heart.
Beauty compensating for “the land of tears,”²
sudden grief–Tsunami wave curling

its scythe blade over a child’s paper boat,
what beauty afloat, sustained by the Artist
disclosing the Beautiful in work gloves
crusted with dots of packing beads,

a leper’s palm; plastic knives raised
in a canopy of ceremonial honor;
blue jar lids joined in a flowing chain;
strings of little girls’ plastic pearls;

the tines of picnic forks; crumpled
grocery bags; white coffee cup lids;
quarter-moon shards of glass;
a vacuum tube; a bottle of hand soap

pumped dry; musical composition sheets,
their weathered backdrop symphony,
palette of Beauty in the eye, the Artist’s
Great Wave of pieces no longer adrift.³

Notes:

 ^* Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Artist of the Beautiful,” Hawthorne’s Short Stories: Edited and with an introduction by Newton Arvin, Vintage Classics, 1946, renewed 1973, pp. 331-

¹The Little Prince, Written and Illustrated by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Translated from the French by Katherine Woods, Harbrace Paperbound Library, 1943, p. 87.

² The Little Prince, p. 31.

³ Katsushika Hokusai’s 1830 painting, “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” is said to encapsulate a people’s deep sense of fear and uncertainty about impending doom in a time of political transition. Artist Julie McGranahan Fink’s recreation of Hokusai’s painting with recycled trash and material was donated to the Pieces Adrift Show sponsored by Keep Pensacola [,Florida] Beautiful. The Pensacola artist’s therapeutic recreation speaks to me of the resurrection of Beauty and Hope in an anxious time.