Still Beautiful

In frosted light
of a moon-horned night,
this place is beautiful.
With each new sunrise,
in field and woodland,
marsh, moor and farmland,
it’s beautiful.

But wherever humans tread
they leave a wasted
trail of destruction –

and this blue planet
is still beautiful.

Kim M. Russell, 13th May 2024

It’s Quadrille Monday at the dVerse Poets Pub, that “magical twice-monthly time when we pen pieces of precisely 44 words, using one word we here at dVerse provide, and our host, D, would like us to play with the word ‘place’.

She says you can write “about your birthplace, your workplace, a fireplace, or something even more commonplace. Get mathematical on us and write about place value. Get scientific and write about displacement. Your place or mine? Write about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Take us someplace new, or no place at all. Hey, you could even write about the place-ebo effect. Just don’t get complacent and misplace your muse.”

De also gave us two examples: a poem by e.e. cummings, and one by Shel Silverstein to inspire us.

I took a poem from 2018 and conjured a quadrille from it.

46 thoughts on “Still Beautiful”

  1. Wonderful, Kim. She does endure in beauty, doesn’t she? Reminds me of our trip to Glass Beach in California last year. There was once a dump nearby, and the surf has battered its remains into gorgeous seaglass, smooth and beautiful. And in so many ways, the land has reclaimed her beauty, forming stone and coral around what mankind has left behind.

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    1. Thanks De! It’s been warm and sunny here for the past few days, but we expect rain tomorrow, so we went to the seaside for a couple of hours today. The sea was calm, but there was a lovely breeze, and we had lunch at our favourite cafe. No sea glass, though we do sometimes find amber on our beaches – and mammoth skeletons!

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