I biked through a lovely little pocket park the other day, nestled at the foot of the High Bridge in Saint Paul. I was having a thoughtful day and stopped to settle on a stone bench.
The park holds some fine public art in its small footprint, including an enormous green chair, the original of which was once displayed at the Walker Art Center. While I sat to think, a woman and her granddaughter approached and enlisted me to take a photo as they clambered up to its oversized seat. “Thanks!” she said. “I have a picture of her mother here, too!”
Their excitement brightened the day, but it was something else that caught me. The park contains a sculpture of rock and metal, including a salvaged baptismal gate that was originally in St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church. The church, mere blocks away, was founded in 1872 by Czech-Slovak and Polish immigrants and is still central to the community; in the neighborhood, they call it St. Stan.
The gate is a remnant of an immigrant church and its way of welcoming babies into its religious community. Through it, behind it, the ground growth is luxuriant, and somewhat untended. Up through the weeds were two pale pink poppies, lovely in color, fragile of petal, brief in flower. And indomitable, making their way up through the spiky underbrush to give passersby a moment of beauty and consideration. They were not easy to see, and all the more surprising for that.
Poppies self-sow. I would propose a theory: that humans alert to the possibility of beauty tend to the same. One small beauty leads to another. One’s eye sharpens for the lovely, even when it springs from the weeds. Soon you see it everywhere.