A Thing of Beauty

What is beauty? It is the dark green of the deodars gleaming their shiny coats like proud armours in the morning light. It is their yellowing seeds drooping in the autumn, as if ready to drop anchor to the bounteous grounds. It is the stillness of the trees in the windless autumn, still as the peaceful heart of an old man in the autumn of his years. It is in the patterns which the pollen makes on the sloping rooftops, sliding and ever changing. It is in the constant racket that crickets make all throughout the autumnal mornings, unrelenting and unapologetic, repeating the same auditory pattern like clockwork, as if they don't mind the sun's waning afternoon light, as if they don't care about the sunflowers turning their gaze towards the sun, as if they don't pay heed to the monkeys suddenly getting into an altercation, loud and rude. Beauty is in the coolie who slowly climbs 10 steps after taking a quick rest, with the heavy load making him stoop. Beauty is in the yellowish-white butterfly which you suddenly perceive fluttering along purposely, as if knowing from afar which flower will satiate it from its full nectar. Beauty is in the sunlight which falls aslant on my desk, making visible the small yellow dots that is pollen, the reproductive aid that in its non-discriminatory behaviour, has landed at the wrong place. Beauty is in the new shoot of the money plant in my room which is as yet only a light green tip on the stem of the last leaf that has opened up. 

All this I was inspired to write upon coming across the following words from Khalil Gibran on beauty: "It is that which draws your spirit. It is that which you see and makes you to give rather than receive. It is that thing you feel when hands are stretched forth from the depths to clasp it to your depths. It is that which the body reckons a trial and the spirit a bounty. It is the link between joy and sorrow. It is all that your perceive hidden and know unknown and hear silent. It is a force that begins in the holy of holies of your being and ends in that place beyond your visions...".