Big Circle

Holding hands

In a wide-open space

How long is this string of folk, anyway?

Looking left, looking right

the horizon hides the ends, both ways

Distinctiveness pervades, we don’t look alike

Size, shape, features: all different

Skin, eyes, and hair compliment incongruently

From different eras too it seems

spanning millennia

Comeliness and homeliness drop away from notice

eclipsed by beauty through and through

The healed perceiver sees it

Those beheld, clearly,

healed as well, exuding beauty.

Looking again, detecting now a most gradual arc

in both directions—this is no line but a ring

Energy of some lively sort flowing

The current, passing hand to hand

and flooding each body has a source, surely:

Life generated to the whole

The string gladly breaks and rejoins, breaks and rejoins

each time adding another—the flow never halting

it sweetens with each new inclusion.

The circle exists somehow for those yet to join

And the beauty of each will be known.

                                —David Price, 28 October 2022