Things You Do Not Understand

French cafe music fills the room.
On the walls hang Russian icons and illuminated manuscripts,
Their colors bright, their words foreign, beautifully mysterious.

This is where you live, where you choose to live,
surrounded by things you do not understand
Finding beauty in them none the less.

About this poem.

I love French cafe music. I can’t understand a word. And in my living room, I have a Russian icon and a page of a Medieval illuminated manuscript. I can’t understand a word.

I have stopped being confused by a world where we say and do things so contradictory it makes our head spin if we let it. I have stopped being confused because I don’t try to figure it out any more. There’s beauty in everything, even the strange and broken. Sometimes especially the strange and broken.

Tom