How Beautiful
By Mary Jo Bang
A personal lens: glass bending rays
That gave one that day’s news
Saying each and every day,
Just remember you are standing
On a planet that’s evolving.
How beautiful, she thought, what distance does
For water, the view from above or afar.
In last night’s dream, they were back again
At the beginning. She was a child
And he was a child.
A plane lit down and left her there.
Cold whitening the white sky whiter.
Then a scalpel cut her open for all the world
To be a sea.
Copyright Credit: “How Beautiful” reprinted from Elegy by Mary Jo Bang. © 2007 by Mary Jo Bang. Used with permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Source: Elegy (Graywolf Press, 2007)