On my birthday last year, a dear friend presented me with a framed copy of the poem that follows. It hangs now in my bedroom and I often use bits and pieces of it as inspiration for my meditation. Its simplicity and brevity are hardly indications of the weighty message it delivers. There’s so much to consider in these words…

Flowering 

     by Linda Buckmaster

Pick a crevice,
a homey gap
between stones
and make it
your own.

Grow a life here
from wind
rain
and the memories of ancients
embedded in limestone.

The bees will use you
for their sweet honey.
The rock will soften under
your touch.
You will draw moisture from fog
and hold it.
Your presence
will build soil.

This is all we have
in this life
all we own:
a flowering
an opening
a gap between stones

On most occasions when I read this poem, my mind travels back in time. Long forgotten figures, once significant, walk out of my past and into my present.  We visit, reviving memories – some joyous, others maybe not so. Those moments of my life of which they are a part are, as the poem says, all that I have. I am […]