Life Goes On

Yesterday as I admired and photographed the beautiful amaryllis flower in the morning, little did I know what would happen in the afternoon. As I sat to eat lunch I noticed that the stem of the huge flower was beginning to lean to one side. I wondered if I should prop it up with a stake of some kind but then became engrossed in other activities.

The next time I came out to my dining room studio, the photo above is what I saw. Unfortunately the stem had collapsed completely breaking at the base. So I cut off the remaining strands that were still attached to the amaryllis bulb and placed the tall stem in a tall vase.

Sigh…

Despite my sadness at it’s fall

Life Goes On

Sometimes mistakes and distressing events turn out to be blessings in disguise. As I began photographing the flower in it’s new watery home I realized that it was much easier to see different sides and angles with the flower stalk in a vase.

This morning the flowers are all open and it’s more beautiful than ever.

I made a mistake in not tending to the flower immediately when I saw that it was leaning. But because of that mistake, I now am able to photograph it in many different ways that I could not have when it was attached to the amaryllis bulb.

Life Lessons

Life offers us tiny lessons frequently if we are awake enough to notice them!

The Poet With His Face In His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.”

― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

That’s it for today friends. Though I am sad for the flower that it is not still connected to it’s source of life, I am glad that I can still enjoy it’s beauty and grace. And I am still feeling joy simply looking at it.

And though I am sad for all of the pain the pandemic has brought to many around the world, still I find joy in everyday events in my life. Life goes on through it all.

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, be very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

Mary Oliver “Don’t Hesitate” from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

May you walk in beauty and give in to joy when you feel it.