Beauty Matters

The prompt for What's going on is Beauty 

Beauty Matters

The parched ground
of life is thirsty,
longing for meaning,
searching for happiness.

Are we losing beauty?
Is that why the soul
falls silent?

Beauty is love.
It speaks in tongues,
the language of quiet wonder
whirling in our hearts.

Not the false worship
of neon-lit shop windows
or the god of glitter we kneel to,
which may dazzle again and again
but never become the fire

we find in sparkling eyes,
or in the sunrise held in a baby's breath,
or in the hush that rises
when a slumbering lake
reflects a purple sky
and a mountain robed in snow,
standing guard over the moment.

So we stumble onward,
hollow and unlit,
until the invocation of beauty
awakens us to growth.

Then the heart remembering
swings open like a gate
into dream-days
punctuated by stars,
and the key of wonder unlocks
the universe we carry inside.