Lotus Petals

A portal opens
whispering the way
to secret gardens –
where perennial wisdom
laced through layers of leaves
quietly awaits discovery.

Ask a seasoned gardener…
The first year they sleep,
second year they creep,
third year they leap!

From dirt to divinity…
Nothing of lasting worth
is done in haste.
Beauty is born of Faith.

What joy to enter the garden!
How I long to stand and gaze —
Like a child, I would pluck
a bloom, and inhale the essence
of every specie and kind
of flowering mind.

But now it’s enough
to stand back and behold
the abundant sanctuary illuminated
through the portal’s glowing arch
where one glimpses
hummingbird flights of imagination
and darting thoughts of dragonflies
vining and entwining with strands
of Whitman, Keats, Merwin, Stevens,
Wrights, Hecht, Hughes, and Herbert,
layered with shoots from Hilles and Bo
Pat, Gina, Martha, Chris, Susan and Sheila…

There is Gratitude for
preparing the soil with passion
germinating seeds with example
watering roots with acceptance, and
fertilizing blooms with praise.

Cross pollinating vigorous strains
of imagination in the
splendor of creation
who can fathom what hidden gifts
the tightly coiled fern
may reveal
in its unfolding?

Ann West, Chautauqua, 7.13.07
For poet Rick Hilles and participants in his poetry workshop, Portals to Secret Gardens and Other Paths to the Numinous