Everywhere I looked I could not escape beauty
The big granite stone with a single spot of lichen
Its faces looking at me with bemused expressions
The jogger who smiled
As we each feinted to let the other pass
The six cactus flowers one still a green bud
The giant oak that stretched its many arms in exultation
The side facing me cut away to let the power lines through
The late sunset a blazing gray in the clouds
The flitting bat every veer and cut
Evidence of the keenest rationality

All this on the day of another mass shooting
This time of children
Again