|
A Pier at Sunset
Old Orchard Beach, Maine
* * *
Bob Marley -
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
William Butler Yeats, "The Lake of Innisfree" -
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
* * *
Sept 2016 -
A lovely, wilted red rose is in a glass on my kitchen table. Yes, that is what I said - lovely, wilted. Someone left the beautiful, fresh rose on my desk at work. I do not know who. That was two weeks ago. Most persons would have removed and thrown away the lovely, wilted rose - they would not see its beauty remains as lovely as before, only different, even transformed.
A few things about the rose I know for sure ...
(1) Simply because most persons, even almost all, see wilted roses as having lost their beauty and to be disposed of, that is not true. If we see with the Heart, which means the beauty in us looking out, what most, even almost everyone, sees will not be what we see through or how we esteem other persons or things, in general.
(2) We see as we are. We never see anything as it is apart from where we see it from - you, me.
(3) The lovely, wilted rose is lovely not merely as a material explanation of its exterior - a wilted exterior -, but the interiority of what it represents as a rose and that it was given, a gift always, even when the rose is no longer wilted, no longer a rose.
(4) There is continuity between the rose when fresh and wilted, and that continuity provides a link of communion within the impermanence so that impermanence is good news - form is eternal essentially, not accidentally - according to qualities. Now, see, you and I are like that, so we, too, are not a bundle of qualities but [that] the qualities apply to. And the rose envelops and is enveloped by ... all from which the rose became and all that will arise from the rose. We are literally soaked in the Eternal, and most persons seem to miss that altogether.
I do not know when I will remove the rose, likely not for many days still. The lovely, wilted rose has some wise lessons it silently shares. Every form of Grace bears in its interiority wisdom we can hear, if we will only listen. Everything shines with Truth. But to listen to things like wilted roses requires a humility that many of us simply cannot allow ourselves to be with long enough to see why a wilted rose is so lovely and so wise.
In reflecting on the above musing, what speaks to you of Truth and Life? What is beauty? Do you know someone (something) you are not physically attracted to but are attracted to the beauty manifested in and through him or her (it)? In what ways do you manifest beauty? What wisdom lessons does nature about you share with you? Do you take time to listen to nature? To your own inner nature?
* * *
*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2023.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
|
