Sweet Taste of Beauty – a poem by Marilyn Grant

Sweet Taste of Beauty

I step outside and
my eye catches
…a beam of light filtering
through the tree branch
a red-breasted finch
…looks back at me
for a second
before it remembers
to be alarmed and flies off

in that brief moment before
thought claims the experience
beauty stuns my mind and I am
wedded to the finch,
the tree, the sunlight
thought intrudes and
names the nameless, calling it beautiful
calling it tree, finch, sky
calling it mine, splitting the moment
into in here and out there
but the sweet taste of
beauty rejoicing lingers and
somewhere in the layers of
carefully catalogued experiences
a space opens where the light seeps in
so I can find my way again.

Marilyn Grant taught Creative Writing at Cerritos College, CA, where she was an adjunct professor of English, and journal writing workshops for Orange County Hospice nurses.  Roger Housden, a published author, was her teacher for a memoir writing course, and she is a member of Writers4Writers in Orange County, CA.  She recently joined a nationwide group of spiritual seekers called “We Awakening Circle.”