Beast Discusses Beauty

She is beautiful without embellishments or artifice.

  Like me, she is an unadulterated natural self.

  Her merchant father sent her clad in haute couture

  but she would look good in the horse's burlap nosh bag.

  But, how like a beast I am, running on about her looks

  when it is her instinctive calm and simple modesty

  that both soothe and bind my heart. The magic

  crystal ball might show me what our future holds,

  but I prefer to blunder along now, living in the moment,

  hoping that somehow she comes to realize that I am

  more than this hair, these paws, my outsize body,

  and find in me a kindred soul and loving heart.