The beautiful cracked cup

“I must have beauty around me!”
she declared as I tried to get rid of a colouful cracked cup
She clung to beauty, breathed it in
Beauty poured out of her
as a way of seeing
as drops of colour into an old glass bottle
so that light would shine through
and zing with others on her window sill
with the seedpods and picked flowers
and tiny plants growing in saucers
and recipes cut from a magazine
and a feather from a pheasant

Lynn, my darling, you could see
beauty in the least of things
In your world everything mattered
everyone could be remade
with enough love and beauty

You refused to believe
that the ugliness in your body
could grow and grow and
squeeze the life out of you

Your body knew it true
but mind and soul clung to beauty
and cracked cups

O Lynn, as you slipped
gently over into eternity
what glories did you see?

My soul’s seeing is blind
to the colours and patterns
of heaven brilliance

But you, you now
have beauty all around you!