Wisdom Has Wide Eyes (poem)

 Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference for Roundup.

I'm super-excited about Wild & Precious Writer, the digital course I'll be launching next month! Gratitude to those who have joined me as Founding Members...I'm so grateful for your enthusiasm and support... and your devotion to your writing life. Beautiful!

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Today's poem is a companion piece to last week's "Courage Has Four Feet." Perhaps this is a theme I'll revisit during this year of ArtSpeak: Animals? We'll see! Meanwhile, enjoy Dürer's Little Owl from way back in the Northern Renaissance, when "animal paintings" became a genre of art. 

Like Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer aimed to be precise and often used real (stuffed) specimens as models for his work. At the time, these pieces were considered more "craft" than "art." I'm kind of in love with them and will be featuring quite a few of Dürer's animals this year. :) 

Here's a quote that celebrates the beauty of what's "real," the idea that governed these artists' work:

"Nature holds the beautiful, for the artist who has the insight to extract it. Thus, beauty lies even in humble, perhaps ugly things, and the ideal, which bypasses or improves on nature, may not be truly beautiful in the end." - Albrecht Dürer

Something to think about as we write our poems: what makes them beautiful?

Thank you so much for reading!

Wisdom Has Wide Eyes

it blends in,
unnoticed

listens to starshimmer,
studies canopies
and knotholes

stays awake
across cruelest hours
to hunt

for meaning
             movement
                         connection—

once seen,
the sky cannot be
unseen

- Irene Latham