House of Beauty

I passed a house beside a busy thoroughfare,
not more than twenty feet from the road,
and saw between the cars whizzing by
an old relic with peeling paint,
unkempt yard,
and old, old, windows with crooked shutters -
the fragments of a life unseen by passersby.

And yet, like sun-burst in the midst of rain,
in the midst of dirt,
in the midst of neglect,
someone had erected a monument to beauty,
a single glass door inlaid with scrolling flowers,
bordered by side-panels of flowers
on either side.

This precious detail of a life,
this tribute to the everpresent yearning for beauty,
spoke of the soul who lived beside the road,
who lives beside many roads,
their life invisible to us,
a world unto itself,
a world in which one watches, perhaps,
the cars passing
through a dusty window.