She remembers sitting on the rooftop, admiring sunsets, late spring to autumn. As the temperature rises this week in our last week of February, Mother nature seems to be teasing les Québecois. She doesn’t put it passed a few restaurateurs who may set some chairs on their terraces this weekend so patrons can sip their café au lait or pint of beer inhaling the fresh air.
spring pokes its head
showers clear winter’s debris
snowbanks shrivel
Staring at the title of her story, she smiles. Her mind drifts back in time and she relishes in the treasures of precious moments … priceless moments. The image of her six year self comes into focus as she tiptoes to his bedroom watching those adults kneeling around his bed…her mother, uncles, aunties and GrandMaman…whispering “Je vous salue, Marie” between choked sobs. He sees her in the doorway and smiles with his blue liquid eyes before the adults shoo her away. His smile embedded in her memory forever, seeing death as another beginning…how could it not be with that smile minutes before his last breath?
Her mind fast forwards to that time asking the chemist to write down on her receipt the results of her test…after years trying, the word had a lyrical sound to it, “positive”. Her mind hangs around that time in her life and she plays out those months in slow motion…”Oh my,” she thinks to herself, “The best things in life are really free!”
In regard to the poem, called “Oh, Morning Glory!”, Hirshfield quotes D. T. Suzuki:
“The idea is this: One summer morning Chiyo the poetess got up early wishing to draw water from the well…She found the bucket entwined by the blooming morning glory vine. She was so struck…that she forgot all about her business and stood before it thoroughly absorbed in contemplation. The only words she could utter were ‘Oh, the morning glory!’ At the time, the poetess was not conscious of herself or of the morning glory as standing against [outside] her. Her mind was filled with the flower, the whole world turned into the flower, she was the flower itself…
“The first line, ‘Oh morning glory!’ does not contain anything intellectual…it is the feeling, pure and simple, and we may interpret it in any way we like. The following two lines, however, determine the nature and depth of what was in the mind of the poetess: when she tells us about going to the neighbor for water we know that she just left the morning glory as she found it…she does not even dare touch the flower, much less pluck it, for in her inmost consciousness there is the feeling that she is perfectly one with reality.
“When beauty is expressed in terms of Buddhism, it is a form of self- enjoyment of the suchness of things. Flowers are flowers, mountains are mountains, I sit here, you stand there, and the world goes on from eternity to eternity, this is the suchness of things.” Taken from WomenMasters
May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all. Peace, Peace, Peace.
Tournesol dans un Jardin 