Sun peeks through clouds in Lenox,
A place to stay on our journey home.
A way to break up the trip.
A layover.
Lenox proper, a smallish town, neat.
Pretty, walkable, replete with library, park, shops.
But our stopover is on a thoroughfare near strip malls, motels.
Where machines have run over foliage,
wildflowers, streams with asphalt.
Erected fences, built pharmacies,
hardware stores, inns.
Some years ago, the area likely prospered.
Investors collecting returns.
But now, people tiptoe round a virus,
keeping distances, wearing masks.
Covid testing draws the crowds.
On the edges of the mall grow goldenrods,
reeds, chicory flowers, stag horn sumac trees.
Not to mention tall oaks, maples, pines.
In the early morning calm,
it’s hard not to wonder what commercial greed has wrought.
What people will ultimately have to pay.
Like the brief layover in Lenox,
my layover in life is transient.
That’s why, no matter the human folly,
I seek beauty.
The forest on the edges beyond the mall.
Asters at the foot of a maple just beginning
transformation toward fall.
A sparrow’s wake up call.
Hearing squawks of playful birds atop a pine,
seeing lavender mothers-of-thyme,
then I know for sure,
my spirit is mine.
My soul cascades divine.
Lynn Benjamin
August 31, 2021