beauty – Jill Szoo Wilson

Poem: Until It’s Time

The branch has lowered itself
just enough
to suggest an invitation.

Not to take—
only to come closer.

A cluster of blossoms gathers here,
pink in several decisions,
each petal folded inward
where light reaches
and shadow remains
until
it’s time.

They hold more air than expected.

When the breeze passes through,
the movement is slight—
not a flutter,
not quite a sway—
something closer to breath
distributed among them.

The scent does not arrive all at once.

It holds.

A faint sweetness
moves in and out of notice,
never settling long enough
to be claimed.

It resembles something remembered
without the obligation to be exact.

The bark chooses not to participate.

It’s rough
where the blossoms are not.
A hand, placed there briefly,
would feel the distinction immediately.

Somewhere beyond the frame,
grass yields under passing steps—
a quiet compression,
then release.

Water watches,
with continuity,
a low, steady movement
that declines the possibility
of becoming the subject—
ever the supporting role.

The blossoms remain.

Close enough to touch.
Close enough to confirm
what they appear to promise—

a softness that would not resist
the certainty of fingers.

The distance holds.

The air carries a trace of green—
pale and timid,
warm and cool—
tumbling against itself
waiting to affirm a victor.

Summer already knows who will win.

For now,
the air passes through the mouth unnoticed
halfway inhale
halfway exhale.

Then it is gone again.

The branch lifts slightly
or the body does—
it’s difficult to say which.

The blossoms return
to their position among many,
indistinguishable at a glance.

Still—

for a moment,
they held the conscious weight
of examination.

And in that moment,
briefly,
blushed at their own beauty.

Poem: Stillness and Wind

“You can observe a lot
just by watching,”
said a baseball player
who understood seasons.

Two afternoons ago,
I sat in a lecture hall
watching a man
who still loves what he does.

This, I think, is a form of generosity.

He spoke about observation
as though it were not a skill
but a posture,
something you lean into
rather than master.

Take the dandelion.

We learned its name early.
We learned it could grant wishes
if we breathed hard enough.
We learned the wind would do the rest.

Then we decided
we knew it.

Label applied.
Lesson complete.
Attention withdrawn.

The dandelion continued anyway
with its architecture,
its patience,
its quiet mathematics of return.

It kept unfolding relationships
with bees,
with soil,
with children who forgot its name
but still loved its defiance.

How many things
have we learned only enough
to stop looking?

How many people
do we greet by name
while knowing nothing
of their design?

Later, we were encouraged
to ask our questions
and then to set them down.

To watch.

Intellectual beauty likes to be solved.
Aesthetic beauty prefers to be witnessed.

One explains.
The other arrives.

So perhaps today
we step outside
without extracting meaning.

No schedules.
No proof.

Just a willingness
to stand still
long enough
for something ordinary
to show itself
as extraordinary.

And if we feel something
we cannot name,
let us resist the urge
to name it.

Let us watch.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Poem: Like Any Woman

It was not what she said

Instead

It was the way she held

The stem of her glass

Between freshly painted

Fingernails

Details

Red wine and red.


She breathed in and out

Like any woman would

Except

The silk in her dress

Gathered and fell

With inhale and

Exhale—

I waited for the next.


Her laugh was too loud

No clever disguise of

Civilized

Formalized veiling her mouth

Instead

Candlelit stares

In the face of she

Whose savage joy mesmerized me.


There was a soulful tune

Permeating the room

Penetrating

Armor I knew

Well beyond its usefulness

But

I had grown accustomed to

Until I felt the thrust of she.


Never before had her eyes

Encountered mine

“Hello,” I said—

Enunciation tranquilized

Words fell all the way back

And slid

To the sharpest point

Of her black high heel.


It was not that I fell mute

Instead

I dared not dilute

Fortuity in the air

With words wrapped

In coherence or

Forced insistence

Of my own understanding.


I held my hand open

For her to take

Perceiving

Gently cleaving

To the feeling

If she lay her hand in mine

Her touch would both stop and

Awaken time.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Poem: We Walked Through Snow and Ice

People are complicated. They’re rarely what we first believe, and they’re almost always carrying a weight we cannot see. We tend to notice what others are willing or able to show us, and we assign meaning from there.

Strength, in particular, is easy to misread. Sometimes it’s resilience. Sometimes it’s concealment. Often it’s both.

We move through the world interpreting one another through our own mixture of experience, education, memory, and fear. It is remarkable that we connect at all. And yet, we do.

We walked along in the snow and ice
And you wanted to hold my hand.
I thought you wanted to show yourself strong,
But you were losing your footing too,
And needed my steadiness to help you along.

I refused you because I did not need your help,
I did not fear a fall,
And then you fell all on your own.
I wondered
If I could have helped.

We walked along a sandy shore
And you wanted to hold an umbrella up to the sun.
I thought you worried my skin would burn,
But yours was turning red,
You forgot your hat and needed the cover.

I refused you because I did not need your help,
My skin is olive in tone,
And then your skin turned hot.
I wondered
If I should have helped.

We walked along in wind and rain
And you wanted to lead me into shelter.
I thought you wanted to hold me close,
But beads of sweat gathered around your head,
And fever took your strength and made you ill.

I refused you because I did not need your help,
For me, the rain is a thrill,
And then you lay for days in your bed.
I wondered
Why I did not help.

We walked along inside my dreams
And you wanted to plot out the way.
I thought you wanted to boast in your sense of direction,
But the path grew long and the day turned to night,
So we lost one another under the stars.

I refused your course because I did not need your help,
For me, wandering without plan is adventure,
But then I lost you and you were gone.
I wondered
If I should have let you lead.

We walked away, I went this way, you went that,
And you did not turn to watch me go.
I thought you wanted to stay,
But the distance grew wide
And the time grew long.

I refused to feel because I could not feel it all,
My heart was broken in your hands,
But when I felt it all at once
I turned,
And you were gone.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Poem: Where Our Eyes Have Met

A single painting in an art museum gathers the gaze of countless viewers, linking people who will never stand there together.

This is a poem about that.

A hundred eyes
have paused at this painting—
or maybe a million—
a crowd distributed across decades,
all standing just where I stand now,
though wearing different shoes.

Some looked quickly,
some leaned in,
some tilted their heads
as if the angle held a secret.
None of them knew
they were becoming part of each other’s story.

The gold frame won’t say
how many people have stood here,
or how long,
or what they were hoping for.
Paintings don’t keep lists.

Still, I wonder
if your eyes
have ever touched this canvas
in the exact place mine do now.
If so, the colors would remember.
They are better archivists than we are.

A single brushstroke
might recognize you—
the way the spotlight sharpened on its surface
when you stepped closer,
the way it softens now
because I have.

We might have shared this moment
without sharing the hour.
Two visitors,
unlikely to meet,
connected by a patch of green
that neither of us layered
yet both of us trust.

It’s possible
the painting knows us both—
you by a trace of perfume,
me by the giggle I released too loudly,
you by the tear you wiped away quickly,
and them by a single loose thread
from their bright red scarf.

All the while,
it stays exactly where it is,
patient as a held page,
letting strangers
complete the same sentence
with different eyes.

What an odd, prismatic intimacy—
to be joined
by something that never speaks,
yet answers
each of us
in turn.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Poem: Snowfall On a Patio Chair

It started with one flake I mistook for a drop,
without asking my permission,
as snow often does.
By morning, the patio chair—
the one with the pale blue cushions I meant to bring in—
had accepted its fate
with the patience of an object that knows
humans forget things.

The snow took its time.
A thin first layer,
then another,
each one more certain than the last.
If the chair felt imposed upon,
it gave no sign.

From the maple,
a squirrel watched the slow takeover,
pressed flat against the trunk
in an embrace that invited romance, or,
at the very least,
warmth.
It twitched its tail once—
a gesture somewhere between
expectation and indifference—
then sighed a tiny puff of breath.

Meanwhile, at the back of the yard,
the pine tree leaned lower than yesterday.
The branches, loaded with fresh snow,
descended far enough
to touch the needles that had fallen weeks ago.
A quiet reunion.
If trees feel anything at such moments,
I imagine it’s something austere:
nostalgia, perhaps,
maybe even joy.

A grand ceremony,
and no one asked me to attend.
Still, I stood at the window,
unsummoned,
as winter arranged its small corrections:
the forgotten tucked in,
the living held close,
the fallen greeted by their own.

A world going on
perfectly well
without my remembering.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Poem: In This Light

All summer the rubber tree misunderstood itself
as a subtropical creature with permanent rights to the patio.
Fall corrected that illusion.
I carried it inside
before the cold could finish the argument.

Now it stands beside the southeast window,
where the morning light arrives like a polite guest—
knocking first,
then slipping across the floorboards
in a thin, honeyed ribbon.

This light was not made for grandeur.
It does not flare, or boast,
or promise anything it cannot keep.
It simply lifts the room an inch or two,
enough that even the rubber tree notices—
its leaves catching the brightness
with the same shy greed
of someone receiving a compliment
they secretly hoped to hear.

I water it slowly,
as if pouring out a small confession.
The soil darkens, swells,
takes what it needs
without apology.

I do not tell the tree
that I admire its stubbornness,
or that something in its resilience
feels tender to me this morning.
Plants are suspicious of sentiment.
They prefer steady hands
and predictable light.

Still, the room shifts—
a quiet choreography
of leaf-shadow and sun-warmth.
And for a moment,
we are both content
to be exactly where the season
has delivered us.

Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Poem: Watercolor Dreams

An old poem about waking up from a story that was too small.

He found her with her eyes closed

Tight

Lids wrapped around

Pulled down

And dreaming

Watercolor dreams


He lived a life of comfort

Cotton

Filled his form

Like an animal stuffed

Insulated from

The courage to explore


He held her at one end

Taut

Between fingers tightly wound

Stretching like elastic

Brittle with aging codependence

Afraid to loosen his grip


She was like a Rose

Strong

Yet gentle in her making—

Giving but not taking—

So he wore her pinned

To his jacket like a prize


He pulled one petal at a time

Slowly

Scattered her around himself

Like confetti at his feet

Glimmering in sunlight

After a parade


She watched through rose colored

Eyes

Wondering at his dance

As he tapped his feet

To the rhythm of his science

Letting his heart beat out of sync


She rested a while tired by the

Miles

Traveled in footsteps and

In smiles broadly sewn

To the walls of her soul

Like threads of a tapestry


He named his rationality

Reason—

Suddenly like a thief

Holding a bag of gold

Heavy with secrets untold and

With her time and observations


She cut the rope between her

Heart

And the anchor he threw

Watched it sink

Until she could see it

No more, now


There at the bottom of the

Ocean

And her sighs

Lay the anchor and

There on the water’s edge

Sail her heartbeat and

Her watercolor dreams.


© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025

Sonnet: Lantern of the Withering Grove

Through slender branches shines the swollen star,
A lantern hung upon this midnight’s crest.
Its argent glow calls shadowed fields afar
To bow in prayer, by silver calm caressed.

The fading canopy, with colors frail,
Lets gilded light slip softly through the air.
Each trembling bough becomes a fragile veil,
That parts to show a vision rich and rare.

The orb ascends with majesty untamed,
While earth beneath lies weary, bare, and still.
Though time shall claim what autumn once had named,
The moon restores the world with tender will.

So beauty dwells where silence weaves its art,
And sows eternal wonder in the heart.

Jill Szoo Wilson, 10/25

I wrote this sonnet after gazing at the October supermoon, its light threading through thinning branches and the fading canopy of fall.

Read more by Jill Szoo Wilson on Substack.

Poem: Moonlight We

The sun grows hours

Then burns them dry

Like

Tumbleweeds

Blow by the days

And we

The cattle drivers

Saddle the minutes

And ride them,

Guide them from atop

Their prickly backs.


The Sunlight We

Strap on our shoes

Tattered at the soles

To tread

A line

Publicly defined by

The rules of

Marketplace

And who the other

We’s expect us all

To be.


Astride atop

Rolling ticks and tocks

And traveling

Through noon time

Crowds of We

Is She—

An explorer whose eyes

Are lifted

Toward the sky

Inside a sea of eyes

Seeing same.


The busy pavement

Vibrates with progress

As defined

By hand held devices

That shine

In daytime rays

And ricochet

Blinding

The gaze

Of the masked We

Stumbling at a gallop’s pace.


But she—

She sees.


She sees what is real

In the moment defined

Not confined by

What she should

Why she ought or

Questioning

Why she would

She rides the time

And feels the warmth

Of the sun instead of

Using it for light.


Reflection of the sun can be seen everywhere.

Embracing now

A give and take

Of new and ideas

And what does it mean

She offers herself

To the questions

That rise

Dwells in the

Wonder

Of wandering

Free.


And he—

He sees.


Along the trail

Sprawling on every side

Is one—

A He—

Who rides his own

Tumbleweed time

Carrying boredom

Wrapped in

Discontent

Searching for what

Is relevant.


His eyes wide open

Heart behind a shield

He journeys

With a purpose

Gone cold

Like a campfire

Dwindling—

He rubs his hands together

Above reasons

That fail

To keep him warm.


Until the moment

Just one moment

He

Amidst a thousand eyes

Sees

She

The only she

In a sea of

We

Whose awareness

Pierces the shield of his own.

No words exchanged—

Not yet—

But the moment is frozen still

The sun holds its place

And reveals

Details of her face

As though

The opulent

Fiery star above

Is painting

Something new.


“Hello,”

Says she and

“Hello,”

Says he and the sea of

We begins to roar

Once again.

He asks,

“Can you travel

This way?

If only

Today?”


He smiles—

Not only his lips

But eyes brightly

Joining as

His hands begin to warm.

She accepts

His invitation,

“I will come

Your way

Let’s not delay

The sun will set into night.”


Two journeys become

One moonlight We

As the day stumbles

Behind the moon—

The moon that stops

The growth of time

Replacing stars

For minutes

And silence for sound

When all around

Disappears

Into a single

You.

© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2023

Read more by Jill Szoo Wilson on Substack.