The sky, lit up like a question or
an applause meter, is beautiful
like everything else today: the leaves
in the gutters, salt stains on shoes,
the girl at the I.G.A. who looks just like
Julie Delpy, but you don’t tell her—
she’s too young to get the reference and
coming from you it’ll just seem creepy.
So much beauty today you can’t find
room for it, closets already filled
with beautiful trees and smells and
glances and clever turns of phrase.
Behind the sky there’s a storm
on the way, which, with your luck,
will be a beautiful storm—dark
clouds beautiful as they arguably are,
the rain beautiful as it always is—
even lightning can be beautiful in a
scary kind of way (there’s a word
for that, but let’s forget it for the moment).
And maybe the sun will hang in long
enough to light up a few raindrops—
like jewels or glass or those bright beads
girls put between the letters on the
bracelets that spell out their beautiful names—
Skye or Miranda or Veranda—which isn’t
a name really, although it’s also a word
we use to call things what they are,
and would be a pleasant place to sit
and watch the beautiful sky, beautiful
storm, the people with their beautiful
names on their way toward the lake
in lovely clothing saying unpleasant
things over the phone about the people
they work with, all of it just adding to the
motherlode, the surfeit of beauty,
which on this day, is just a fancy way
of saying lots, too much, skid loads, plenty.