Snow or Frost on an Autumn Leaf

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

From where does beauty come, from lipstick kiss

(From blood bright mouth), from blue of butterfly

Before the pin is struck through thorax, (hiss

Unheard—if hiss there be), from lover’s lie

To get you in between the sheets, from black

Between the nebulae and dying stars,

Or from the sun’s corona, Pasternak

On love or loss, or from a hero’s scars?

Does beauty rise from Plato’s realm, Ideal

Beyond our poverty, or far beyond

That thinking space, or come alone from real

Shapes only, ripples, waves on Walden Pond?

  Where Beauty comes from we may never know

    But somewhere mixed between the fall and snow.

~ Phillip Whidden