April 2, 2012

This is such a warm morning for so early in the spring, and it's still dark outside.  The birds are awake though at least a couple of mockingbirds have started their predawn serenade.  They know so many songs it's like listening to several flocks calling to each other, though I know they are probably rivals for some sweet things affection!  My favorite color has arrived, though the trees are still really hard to see, I know they are almost ready to make their shadowy appearance. 

From Cut Flowers

Somewhere a meadow strewn
with flowers untidy as stars, shimmers
in light. A meadow uncut, never turned.
I think I am talking about fear
and I know fear is only ignorance
of our true nature, mistaking
the loss of ourselves for an end
of being. The flowers stand up in the air
beside the window. They were not slain,
they were not rolled in heaps
into ditches to lie upon one another;
they stand up in the air beside the window,
translated, waning
as life wanes, in normal use, not in terror.
I am sitting by the window.
I am looking at the flowers.
The night air is cool and I breathe it
into every cell. Molecules of
darkness become me.

Cynthia Huntington

This is a longer poem of which this is the last stanza, exploring the metaphor of cut flowers.  I buy cut flowers sometimes, make beaded ones, by artificial ones, they all have their own beauty, but only the cut flowers change, change color, curl up, lose petals, slowly becoming something different.  I liked the idea of life waning in normal use, not in terror, and the night air as a blessing really, breathing it in, becoming the darkness.  I think from som many early mornings that the dark has no terror for me, that it seems a peaceful time, before so many others are awake, as if the night is taking it's last sweet breaths, cool and full of possibilities, before the sun lights up the world and we all start the daily work.   The idea of life wearing away like a stone in water, slowly over time appeals to me, makes it less something to be fought against, more something to be accepted the way we accept that cut flowers change and wilt, part of their beauty, the reason we have them sometimes instead of beaded or artificial ones that never change.

Make a nice Monday, enjoy something unexpected, notice something new, work hard <smile>!