Beauty All Its Own

 

A broken tree limb,

jutting out into the vastness

of the sky; empty, set apart

amidst the leafy greenness

all around; yet she hangs on,

a rugged beauty all her own;

endurance, courage, grit.

***

Another limb, this from my family tree;

Roger was his name, our uncle,

though we cousins never deigned to dignify

his uncle-ness; he was always simply Roger,

in all his simple-ness, sitting with his Bible

open in his hands, most times upside-down,

muttering his prayers in a gibberish

that surely made the angels smile.  

But, oh, we fiendish cousins laughed

and mocked him, feebled

as he was with Down Syndrome;

we’d poke and sometimes pinch his arm,

diminish him in any way we could,

then run from Grandma’s wrath;

but Roger beamed on us an almost constant smile,

a smile that hangs still in my mind,

a gift from Uncle Roger’s simple joy,

his gentle benediction; courage, grit,

endurance; a beauty all its own.