A flower for Thay

Opening "Peace is Every Step" tonight, wondering at the revelation I would encounter, I found this poem, by a friend of Thich Nhat Hanh's, who died at only 28.

Standing quietly by the fence,

you smile your wondrous smile.  

I am speechless, and my senses are filled 

by the sounds of your beautiful song, 

beginningless and endless.  

I bow deeply to you.

The "you" in the poem is a flower, a dahlia.  The writer was so moved by a flower, he stopped and wrote this poem.

Ah, to be so in the moment that we notice a thing of simple beauty, that we are touched deeply, as if by a lover.  This is living.

When I read the poem, my friend and neighbor filled my mind.  We exchange - words, pie, books, missing ingredients, sometimes tears, a sort of broken blender (for paper making) - through our fence (opened to allow exchange).  How much she enriches my soul.  Cheerful in the face of pain and a dreadful disease, cheerful in the face of any kind of woe, cheerful in the face of my grumbling (about the puppy, my husband, the weather!!).  Always with arms open, heart open, ears open.  She doesn't seem to know how to judge, saint behind the glass.  Occasionally I have to remind myself not to elevate her so, that she too is only human.  But I do think her doctor may discover her heart is abnormally sized.  Sometimes I let myself think about a day in which she does not call hello over the fence.  "Beginning and endless, I bow to you."  Thank you Thay.  I will treasure today, for this moment doesn't keep.  Let my senses fill.  

Tonight I came home late from work and everyone was asleep.  Sitting on the counter, one luscious piece of cream cheese cherry pie.  I don't even have to wonder where it came from.  And somehow it tasted like warm sunshine and laughter and a wry sparkle and love, on surely the coldest, most dreary, blizzarding night of this year.  I will have to get that recipe.