Poetry: Beautiful mind, Beautiful man
Beautiful mind, Beautiful man
A mother, two brothers, two adopted sisters, and a nephew scatter
ashes of a body, once the container of fifty one years of a beautiful man.
his essential created being now free in shadowless light.
They pray, cry, hug, read words of scripture.
They are surrounded by gray pumiced rock outcroppings, remnants
of a volcanic age, later silted by calcium carbonate deposits from an ancient lake.
They are on the 'flats', the outskirts of town,
land only fit for spent gun shells and bottles.
How could anything here be considered beautiful?
Yet a beautiful man spent his last days here,
creating story and verse from a seeming endless storehouse
of intelligence and compassion, enlarging life in a small place.
In a land valuable for mining, ranching and farming,
this beautiful man mined original words and phrases, which
raised a crop of esteem for a community thirsty
for the telling of their story.
This beautiful mind called no attention to itself, boasting to no one.
Rare intelligence marked this man, coupled with an eye for beauty,
for gentle life seen in slight nuances,
feline and feminine face and form.
He captured on film and word, the beauty of sport missed by most,
little regard paid to score and accolade, instead spotlighting
prowess of the person and team, the devotion of coach and parent and community,
for the pure love of participation.
When cultural obsessiveness and
the win-at-all-cost outcomes drive sport,
this beautiful man saw and reported a wholly other reality,
thus showing us what we already knew but had forgotten:
that beauty is found in the dignity
of how a player carries themselves win or lose,
and in their contribution as a teammate,
and in the nobility of family and community pride and sacrifice.
This beautiful man told this story with
understated genius, undeterred diligence, and unflagging excellence,
while walking the sidelines, sitting at diner counters, barstools,
friendliness and wit his currency.
He was capable of contribution to the highest of human professions,
yet created a resume' of courage to gain control of daily life,
a vocabulary of winsomeness created
through limitation, pain and solitude.
He learned to find joy in the small things of life,
in a single bloom, a cat needing a home to warm in his sun,
a well-chosen word, things that are lost on the rest of us
who seek fulfillment in the favorable circumstance and ego compliment.
This beautiful man scattered seeds of beauty throughout his life,
especially these last seven years, when the magnificent austerity of pain and loneliness
bore a measure of freedom, and now finds its own brightest freedom
earlier than the rest of us, embracing him one October evening.
In memorium to my unique brother, David Emmett Harrison, 1961-2012 Prh 11/2012
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