Meditations in Fast Times: 4. Flowers were our guests

                 4.

Flowers were our guests,
stopping with us
and blushing at our attention
to their beauty,
as if to say,
we just are;
in them is crystallized
the liquid potential
of increase and decrease,
of here, of now,
of gone, of loss,
of remembering
and return.

On the crowded city streets,
of a Winter day
the silent array
of lax and flaccid faces
reflects a vacancy, promoted
by distraction to distraction
by means of empty distractions
or at least none that edify.

Winter came to those streets,
but not to this garden,
where Spring still manages
to surprise with bright colors
to delight with intoxicating aromas
—ah, how intoxicating!

High in the trees,
the wise hoopoe bird
makes the rallying cry:
lost atoms, faces, hearts:
return to your center;
the outlier calling
is an empty journey.

Rose and jasmine,
hyacinth, Persian blue allium and iris,
showing through twisting honey suckle,
our flowers, our friends,
having come to visit,
are grateful to retain their seats;
the dusty bowl of petals
is no fit ending to their story
or ours.

© 2014 Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Flowers I Have Culled

Flowers, flowers I have culled

from the garden of your disaffection.

Small they are,
yet poignant—
they offer a wistful air,
as if afraid to breathe.

Yes, I have culled flowers,
flowers from the garden of your disaffection,
and I have put them in the sun,
to dry into memory.

Small and sad,
vague and rootless,
I could never get near enough
to find the center
so to transplant them
into more fertile soil.

So the only recourse
to their withering
is to cull the flowers
and to dry them,
like the tears I have shed,
to preserve their essence,
yet let them fade
into a less painful memory.

Perhaps I should walk away,
but there is yet a tristesse beauty
that draws me to care, and so
I continue to cull the flowers,
if only to preserve a beauty
that might have opened to the light.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen