Faith K. Stern, Aesthetic Realism consultant, created the popular website beautyofnyc.org with her husband John Stern. She says:

I love Eli Siegel’s poem “Meant To Be.” It presents the importance of relation—a subject Mr. Siegel loved and was passionate about. “Meant To Be” combines the everyday and the philosophic. It shows how things—from the intimate to the wide, from kitten to planet—can be friendly to each other. And through our seeing how things are truly related, we can see the world in its diversity as a friend.

Studying Aesthetic Realism, I’ve learned that I have to do with the wide universe and the things and people in it in ways I never dreamed of. Here is the poem:

Meant To Be

Consider, friends, how lovingly,
One thing meets another:
As for instance, kitten a kitten,
Leaf a leaf,
Book a book,
Or planet a thing.
Consider how this can go on,
Indefinitely, in any time,
Let alone all time.
Consider, friends, the impermanence of obstruction,
The friendliness and everlastingness of possibility,
And such matters:
And you will alter a little
The irritation of long ago,
Question its authenticity,
And use the past
To be refreshed,
As it was meant to be—
Used now.

—Eli Siegel

>> Read more poems by Eli Siegel.