Pretty Faces

today i am sur­round­ed by beau­ty. the clus­ter is filled with pret­ty faces star­ing intent­ly at the sundry tasks before them. a wrin­kle of con­cen­tra­tion here, the trout look there, bits of half heard mum­bled span­ish. innu­mer­able sighs. here come three more pret­ty faces. i hope we have enough work­sta­tions to trap them in this cin­derblock par­adise. even if a caged bird stops singing you can still admire its plumage. i can’t keep them caged under my scopophilic gaze though. i’ll let them fly away and spend their smiles on oth­ers. i hope they appre­ci­ate what they have been giv­en.

it is best when they laugh though. for it above all things makes them more than just an object and gives them per­son­al­i­ty. a sud­den burst or a muf­fled gig­gle have the same impact on me. it unplugs them from the matrix just long enough to break the imper­son­al silences that per­vade the day. it burns itself into my mind like the phos­phor after­glow on a fad­ing tv screen. the late show is over. time to go to bed.