A Poem and Personal Mantra

Once on a walk I saw a birdbath in a front yard with a sign taped to it, "Poems: Please Take One.” In the shallow concrete bowl fluttered a stack of papers. The first ten or so were all the same poem typed and dated that day. Beneath those were other poems with earlier dates. I took a couple, charmed by the idea of finding poems on my walk. But alas, the poems were written by the owner of the bird bath and weren’t that good. Actually, they were pretty terrible. Still, ever since, I’ve wanted to pass out poems to random strangers. There is no bird bath in my front yard, but if there were I’d like to think I’d fill it, not with my poor attempts at poetry, but with my personal favorites. Since there are still a few days left in April, national poetry month, I thought I’d use this blog as my digital bird bath and leave you a poem.

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now   
Is hung with bloom along the bough,   
And stands about the woodland ride   
Wearing white for Eastertide.   
   
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,   
And take from seventy springs a score,   
It only leaves me fifty more.   
   
And since to look at things in bloom   
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go   
To see the cherry hung with snow. 

This poem by A. E. Housman has significantly shaped my personal philosophy and led to more than one road trip. “And since to look at things in bloom fifty springs are little room, about the woodlands I will go to see the cherry hung with snow.” I feel this line so keenly; one life is not long enough to see all of this beautiful planet. I am especially drawn to transitory beauty: meteor showers, sunrises, wildflower blooms. I’m kind of nuts about wildflowers. I once dragged my whole family on a five hour drive to see the super bloom in Death Valley, after spending a few hours there, we turned around and drove back. Another time my husband added three hours to our drive home from visiting family in Utah so I could see the California poppies blooming in Antelope valley. All of this was before California’s super bloom this spring. You better believe I went to see that.

I almost cried when the group I was with didn’t want to pay the $10 each to ride the shuttle to see the flowers. What was $70 dollars to a once-in-a-life-time superbloom? But it was not just the money, they were deterred by the hoards of people waiting for the buses. So we drove on, I felt a bit of a martyr because I was giving up my wildflowers to keep the peace. I was so disappointed, I could hardly enjoy the swaths of poppies we passed on the freeway.

Now this next bit may not have been completely legal. My sister and husband thought we could find another place to see the flowers. We followed a frontage road until we came upon a bunch of cars parked at the side of the road. We may have been trespassing. There was no “No trespassing” sign but there was a chainlink fence flattened by flood waters and debris which we walked right over. We traversed a wide flood plain until we came to a swift creek and a knot of people.

One by one we crossed on a wobbly log to the hillside of poppies. None of the photos, not even the satellite photos captured the vastness of the beauty. Millions and millions of golden poppies. Each individual flower, so silky, so delicate with its fernlike leaves was exquisite on its own. Twisted up tight, each blossom swirled open at the touch of light—an orange circle reflecting the sun above. Whenever a breeze moved across the slope the flowers swayed like dancers in tulle skirts. We kept climbing. At each new ridge the view of poppies expanded, endless poppies, a universe of dancing suns.

I didn’t think I could ever get my fill, but some in our party did not want to spend the rest of their life on that random hill side. After an hour or so. we descended. Again we came to the river crossing. Now the crowd by the log had grown. Only an hour or so from Los Angeles, the people gathered represented the diversity of that city. A man with a turban crossed the log. Followed by a young Korean dad carefully cradling his baby as he crossed the creek. Behind them waited at least three generations of an Indian family, grandma in a sari. Behind me a young latino couple snapped a selfie. We all smiled and nodded as we passed. I kept thinking, these are my people, fellow pilgrims searching for beauty. A cynic might chime in and say, no they just wanted to post a picture on Instagram. (They maybe also had someone in their party too cheap to pay to ride the shuttle—Another way I felt a kinship with them.) Maybe? perhaps that’s what brought some of them to the mountain, but that’s not what filled their eyes with wonder, or why strangers waited so respectfully stepping aside, patiently taking turns crossing the log. Gathered from all over the world, the group spoke in cheerful hushed tones as if we had entered a great cathedral.

They got it. This crowd of newborns, octogenarians and everything in between truly appreciated that “fifty springs leaves little room.” They understood that the world is crammed with glorious surprises, but sometimes we have to cross flood plains and rivers (maybe even trespass a little) to find that glory.