THE SITTER*

Beauty…

It touches so deeply

it causes us to know something

about ourselves

we did not already know.

Beauty is a mirror held up before us.

We can see ourselves as sitters in it 

and the world as our painter.

Our lives are its pigment, 
pastose strokes, and canvased dance.

We are its portrait.

And, where Sargent might have seen

the animal in his Madame X,

what the world shows us,

if we are willing to see it,

is the human in the animal,

the man inside the finch, let’s say,

the tiny heartbeat behind

the fine feather and brittle bone of love.

*Inspired by Donna Tartt's 

Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Goldfinch