Beauty in Broken Pieces by Mary Kendall

Blue Spiral, Dublin, Ireland. Photograph by India Leigh Lassiter. 2015.

Beauty in Broken Pieces...
 
Perhaps it was once a deep blue vase,
holding seven pale pink peonies
freshly cut one May morning…
 
the silence shattered
suddenly when
she lost her balance,
 
grabbed
        the oval table
 
and together
crashed down,
 
one in splintered pieces,
the other dazed
         watching the water
slowly spread
under the petals.
 
Or perhaps…
 
it was packed away in a doctor’s study,
an old cabinet filled with bottles…
cobalt blue bottles with faded labels,
the dark blue hinting of hidden secrets,
dangers that lay in long-dried residue
of those bottles that were shattered
and thrown upon a fire
that raged for hours,
flaring up in vivid hues
of acid green
and mustard yellow,
tipped with amber,
azure and moon,
the air once heavy
with poison
and dreams.
 
Or…maybe
there was no story.
 
Do you believe the whole really is bigger
than the sum of its parts?
And please, don’t let’s forget
there is always
perspective.
 
Large things are large,
but small things
are also large
if seen
close
up.
 
It is lovely, this small mosaic
made of glass in shades of blue,
 
blue so dark,
it might still hold the sound
of the ocean from the sand
that washed up and back
over and over
dancing on the ocean floor
 
before it became
the glass
we see…
 
for what is glass
but sand
and fire,
 
beach
and
star
 
even
a simple
spiral
mosaic
in shades
of blue and silver
might hold the deep bass song
of the darkling ocean,
the glimmering
whispers
of clouds
above,
 
patterns spiraling through nature
like our thoughts about beauty,
reality or memory’s truth
 
Fibonacci gave it his name,
the Greeks gave it meaning
with their golden ratio…
it exists everywhere
… a simple nautilus shell,
the sunflower’s seed head
that turns to the sun,
and following its cue, the pinecone,
the hurricane, even the galaxy, the cosmos
 
and here with this Irish glass spiral
we come full circle of a woman
with camera, snapping
a photo, capturing
the balance of
silvery bits
to blue
done
just
so
.
Mary Kendall
 
This poem first appeared on Mary Kendall's poetry site, A Poet in Time.

She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her current work and publications can be found on her writing blog, A Poet in Time (www.apoetintime.com). She is the author of a chapbook, Erasing the Doubt (2015) and co-author of A Giving Garden (2009).