For ten minutes I stood completely enchanted and enthralled with scummy soup skin. Ordinarily, I glance at those cafeteria pots of soup with distaste and not a second thought. Today, however, I was compelled to stare, perfectly intrigued.
The skin was a soft, matte opaque olive color (I believe it was split pea). Dancing across it's surface were tiny sequences of ripples and wrinkles, flitting about, rapidly appearing and disappearing, joining each other and splitting apart in conjuction with the currents of heat beneath their surface. This moment made me both happy and sad. Happy because it reminded me of all the beauty and novelty in the world. Sad because of the realization that I am missing out on so much of that beauty. Who knows what the salad dressing was doing...

I have a strange vision.
It's something about beauty
that words can only indicate,
but not describe.

Today it's a tiny brown lake
tinkled with sunglitters,
suburban home to ducks and gulls
snackling in the dull water,
behind a huge, empty shopping center,
deathly quiet,
ringed with willows and grass.

Thrust into the thin shale
at the edge, where the ducks
squat and ponder,
a concrete maw like the head
of a huge, pale worm:
a sewer pipe,
trickling naked waste
into the man-made lake.

It's hot. Car exhaust and slime
and willow-bark and birdsong
combine. I can't find it disgusting
or beautiful only. I only know
I am at peace
before my vista of water and viscera.

On the side of the sewer pipe,
in metre-high letters,
someone has written
"LOVE"

That's my vision.
That's it, exactly.


This is original work

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