The exquisite beauty of youth
is lost on the young, ego
in overdrive, unseated soul;
We’re as deep as what we
think we know, but oh!
A fragile petal waiting
to be plucked; and from
that very moment, life
begins winking off and on
until, settled into its vase,
it crescendos, withers
and dies;
But in the interim,
what informs the flower?
In the ‘interim’ so many things. Very nice write Bela.
Mahalo, Renee. Yes, indeed 🙂
“Hunter at bay
The poet crawls and capers
Across the carnival and charnel-house of life
Fractious fragment of the Creator
Who hath made all things well
Adolescent loneliness
Adult uncertainty
Menopausal anxiety
And senile decay”
As to the informant?
“Seek and ye shall find.”
While most of us have heard
The old story of the drunk
Who looks under the street light
For his lost keys, even though
He lost them elsewhere
Because the light is better there.
… and so, we write(!) Aloha, BN
Well, Bela, this is my new favorite of yours. I resonate with the metaphor, and there’s a delicate beauty in every line.
In the interim
what informs the flower?
What a profound question in your last line! 🌹
Thanks so much, Betty! Glad you liked it. And yes, The Question, no? 😉 xoxo
I do love this Bela 💕 That young ego is in overdrive to prove itself, and tries to convince itself that it knows it all. In its early days it is tender and flexible, but can so easily get attached to an outcome that doesn’t support mind, body and spirit.
Beautifully written 🙏
Mahalo, Val, for having drawn the meaning out so nicely. Aloha <3
Aloha 💛
The adrenaline rush if you will, is the youth for whom distraction comes well-disguised as “the” direction to take, like how quicksand comes well-disguised as solid ground. I admire the trope here: how it crescendos once settled into its vase, before withering and dying. The lure of that crescendo – was that the well-disguised distraction – the promise of permanence not realizing.
Love it, Bela! 🙂
Love your quicksand metaphor, never having actually seen the stuff – but I well remember old (Tarzan?) films I watched as a child, where people would get stuck in it and I was tranfixed – I’m surprised I never sought it out, just to see it for myself! And truly – the promise of permanence and we wonder why some reach the end of their lives so. very. afraid. Thank you for your careful eyes, Mahesh. I am lucky to have had them scan these words 😉
I guess, in the interim…life happens.
Yes. Though the question of what informs the flower points more to what we selectively hear; how we choose to respond to what might be termed circumstances. As they occur 😉 Aloha, Vidur. Thanks for reading.
My pleasure, Bela! Thank you for the insight. 🙂
I found the photo mesmerising – those petals in the process of unfolding spoke to me of all the wisdom nestled therein, not apparent immediately, but waiting to be released as the flower opens up and is ‘informed’ before ‘settling’, ‘withering’ and ‘dying’. Well that’s my take on your beautiful poem, Bela. I really loved this one and is also ‘my new favourite’ of yours.
Many thanks. I liked writing this one as well, especially since I love growing such lovelies as the Tahitian gardenia I photographed for this post. And your metaphor is not in error, at least as I meant to imply through my own reflections. Choices and perspective allow that wisdom to emerge or remain untapped, at least that’s how I perceive it. Life, eh?! Embrace it all or blame others – I can only relate to the empowerment granted through the former. And so, on we go, do we not? Love to you, dear Marie <3
Dear Bela – you are so wise. Much love to you dear.❤
A lovely little piece, dear Bela, but I don’t really understand what you mean by ‘informs (the flower)’ — can you explain? I suppose all of Nature (capital N) does what (together with all that) is in its nature (lower case n) to do. The flower’s nature is flowering. Is this what you mean by ‘inform’ — i.e. what governs the life of phenomena? Each noun sort of verbifies itself in its own informing, yes? Bela is Bela-ing, Marie is Marie-ing, but what ‘informs’ the uniqueness of Bela and Marie as either a first, or exclusive, or ongoing cause can never be identified, can it? You’re neither of you purely the sums of your apparent selves, your own respective minds and bodies, but you’re each the sum of the whole world, in a sense, and all its history, too. If that’s true, then that makes you, Marie and the flower be in, and of, the same essence. I imagine you sense this, absurd and woo-like as it may sound in my clumsy words. There’s no distance between you in Hawaii and Marie in London, is there? There’s space, but then that is a prerequisite of physical existence, and it’s the same space (as an integrated, borderless whole) that both you, Marie and the flower exist within. These past five or six minutes, Bela has existed here, has informed Hariod here, in Glastonbury at 06:25 on a Sunday morning. But she’s always here, too, and not separated by time, or space-time. H <3
Aloha dear one, and I do love your depths, always. My suggestion in ‘what informs the flower’ is to get readers thinking that there are sources and choices as to how the flower unfolds – the flower being the human, in this case.
The collective essence of which you speak is, of course, another long, wide road to explore. It takes a lifetime for most, and many never get far by their own, er, choices made. That anybody anywhere explores anything beyond the mundane these days is what I’m trying to stimulate in my own way.
Much love to you on this sunny Sunday here on the islands. Thanks as always for your valuable voice in this world! <3
Wonderful poem dear Bela.. Yes everything is Temporal.. Nothing lasts.. and yet all is eternal.. argh could go on and on here dear Bela.. But then we mortals are so caught up within our beginnings and endings.. We forget all that unfolds inbetween.. And that is the most important part..
Seeing the beauty we all have within, held at our core, our heart, our centre.. covered like the tight bud.. petal by petal we unfold.
A beautiful piece of writing Bela.. I am all set for my afternoon with your posts 🙂
Precisely – the in-betweens! THAT is what I’m speaking of here. Not the dramatic beginnings and endings, but the substance we gather to us in the interim. Petal by petal. From one gardener to another 🙂 xoxoxoxoxo
Yes, Bela, Big smiles.. from one gardener to another.. <3 Much LOVE..
And to you as well. ❤️