Commentary
I’ve got to laugh at this poem. It’s the kind of thing I write when I’ve been lying in bed, as dreams fade and conscious thought awakens. When I wrote it, I thought it was really good. Two cups of coffee later, I’m not so sure!
I struggle to express my growing impression of beauty. Some of my poems seem to be hitting up against it. I can almost reach out and touch it. But then I find it’s bigger than everything, and so it eludes my grasp.
Two Additional Notes
A couple of my friends who have studied the theological topic of beauty at the doctoral level have given me pointers on the topic. Their help gives me hope. But who knows, it may be above my mental pay grade. That’s a fear I expressed recently in the poem “Insufficiency.”
In my current rapid listen-through of the Bible, I got to 1 Kings 8 today. Here’s a passage that may relate to what I said about the enormity of beauty:
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!
1 Kings 8:27 (Solomon’s dedication of the temple)
(background image is a composite of crystal by “DaModernDaVinci” and sand by Uwe Jelting, both on Pixabay)
#mansreachshouldexceedhisgrasp #robertbrowning #andreadelsarto
