Skunks, Poems, and Charlie Brown

I came across a snatch of poetry that was shared with me years ago by Pat Brown, an English chair I worked with at Overlea High School. Pat was inordinately fond of sharing literary jetsam with the Yahoos she'd been saddled with as colleagues, presumably in an effort to civilize us. She met with mixed success on that front. But some of the stuff she shared stuck with me, including this little excerpt from a poem titled, "A Valentine for Ernest Mann":

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes." 
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

I've always loved A Charlie Brown Christmas, like many folks I suppose, judging from its enduring popularity. Every year I laugh at Lucy shaking her money jar, tear up when Linus gives his "meaning of Christmas" speech, and endlessly repeat the classic line, "You're taking the curl out of my naturally curly hair" to my daughter Alice. And you can't beat the great Vince Guaraldi's score. For all that, my favorite scene is when the kids fix up the ugly, stunted, half-dead little tree Charlie Brown bought and Linus says, "I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all really. Maybe it just needs a little love." I imagine in that moment all the poems that had been hiding in that little tree crawled out and curled up at Linus's feet.

You see, the world tells us beautiful things are loved. I think loved things are beautiful. And if that's even a little bit true, consider the power each of us holds to bring out the beauty in those around us. Imagine if we spent our days loving people with such extravagance that we made them beautiful in the process, just like Charlie Brown's little tree. Friends, consider: who in your life has poems hiding in their eyes, waiting for your love so they can crawl out and curl up at your feet?

Nothing is ugly just because the world says so. Prodigal love can make anything, or anyone, beautiful.