Ugly Peaceful

To be properly ugly,
You have to be in some way
Quite strikingly beautiful.

To be properly ugly
As landscape, you need a scene
Handsome enough for people

To congregate and ruin
The fine details around you.
To be properly ugly,

Mix greenery with stray trash,
Some elegant, curvaceous
Contours crosscut or gouged-out

By gravel pits, power lines,
Abandoned cabins, unsealed
Roads, pit toilets, parking lots,

Or the like, under blue skies.
To be properly ugly,
Water helps—a scruffy shore,

A tumultuous influx
From an irrigation pipe—
Sweet sounds of running water,

Calm sounds of lapping waves,
Birds that can make a living
Out of questionable depths.

Peacefully, the pick-up trucks
Line the shore by the boat ramp.
A few small boats float far out,

A few folks in waders stand
In the shallows, doggedly
Casting, again and again.

The only clouds are contrails.
There are buds on the aspens,
Snow patches in the mountains.