Beauty

Their beauty was still there,
but it was beauty in the broad sense,
the general sense,
the way a forest is beautiful,
or a field of waving grass is beautiful,
whereas any single tree or stalk,
on closer inspection, might be flawed.
-- Michael Blumlein, "The Roberts"
(Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2008)

Morning

She knows that a poet
like Richard would move sternly
through the same morning,

editing it,

dismissing incidental ugliness
along with incidental beauty.
-- Michael Cunningham, "The Hours"