yvonne pearson

In the Eye of the Beholder

This path of tree ferns, regal fronds,

reach fondly for each other,

their beauty lush, careless

of what they shelter:

magnolia blossoms

a doe and her yearling

Steller's jay searching a mate

and us, lurching toward something new,

some beauty that has escaped us all these years.

Each morning we waken to the beautiful path

and the doe and the yearling and remember

the tree ferns in their native New Zealand,

or Haleakala perfected by protea,

whose spiked fingers

curved in cacophonous colors,

remember Sedona sunsets rouged by red rocks,

or the peculiar beauty of tidal pools, sluiced

with green moss and studded with starfish and urchins,

remember when we were limber and lithe

as the wild ponies on Assateague, filled

with the beauty of possibility.

Look now

your body and mine

creased by years of living

and sheltered by the fronds of the tree ferns,

your elegant hands studded with age spots,

my arms with pockets of skin.

See now another kind of beauty.

Yvonne Pearson is the author of the picture book Sadie Braves the Wilderness (MN Historical Society Press, 2017). Her poetry has appeared in Talking Stick, Main Street Rag, Wolf Head Quarterly, Open to Interpretation, Chrysalis, Sidewalks, Literary Mama, and other publications. She has received a Loft Creative Non-Fiction Award, the Loft’s Shabo Award in children’s literature, a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and won several poetry contests.