An Imperfect Morning

Imperfection abounds, the evidence is everywhere, misshapen leaves and tree trunks hunched over and almost touching the ground mark the morning - a dog chasing a ball along the beach has a bent tail, the owner a limp. Across the road, a mower that is cutting the grass in the municipal gardens coughs smoke out of a sick cylinder and a seagull that waits at my feet for a scrap is missing a foot. And I and all the people that are here taking in the morning air share an imperfection written in our genes, unseen, benign or a ticking time bomb waiting to explode into disease. Perfection is an ideal that perhaps exists only in our heads, a notion conjured up and given to grace our departed gods. Everything carries the seeds of its own decay, is sentenced to pass away and yet we swear we see it shine through a crack in time, in nature when caught sublime in a moment of transcendent beauty and in the love hiding at the center of ourselves and our art that threatens to break through and illuminate our dark.