What the Dead Owe the Living

The dead have obligations,

but some are rebellious

or recalcitrant

or simply confused about their new role

in the element in which they

(suddenly awakened)

find themselves.

 

Those of us who expected them to be responsible,

to continue the role they played when alive,

are struck dumb to discover their total absence.

We thought we would find them

(in our dreams, perhaps)

and be comforted

even by their non-corporeal presence.

But no.

Their stark absence startles us

into greater grief than we can bear.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2023 Ann Tudor

Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Your Allotted Patch

Some stay in their allotted patch,

some go beyond.

Boundaries are not prison walls

but suggestions.

 

Would you like to stay within?

Going across the line brings pleasures

of its own.

Stay. Go.

Each is a reflection of the will.

I will, today,

cross over to a greener grass.

I will, another day,

retreat into a corner of my box.

Being boxed in is temporary.

An allotted patch does not determine me.

All paths are open, all are closed—

depending only on the day, the weather,

the portents of the stars.

Each day I wake to see my direction.

 

 

Copyright © 2023 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Gardening

I've been planting and tending

for over eighty years.

Many years the crop has failed

spectacularly:

ruin and devastation as far as

my eye could see.

Heartbreak.

 

And then, like any good gardener,

I'd gather new strength,

spade the soil again,

and replant.

Over and over I'd play

this theme of failure.

I'm ready now

to reap some real rewards.

 

The harvest is here.

I'm seeking it and feeling it:

a long-awaited gathering full of grace.

A blessing that protects

and heals

and teaches

and enriches.

Enough of failure.

I'm ready to reap.

 

 

Copyright © 2023 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Again with the Tulips

I received some three dozen tulips for Mother's Day. Within a week they had done all they were going to do. Five or six of them had bent over in the tulip yoga routine of reaching their heads to the table and then opening their petals wide, wider, widest, until a gentle breath would dislodge them, leaving only the pistil, black at one end like a short, spent match.

 

So there were five or six of these, which had done the right thing. The remainder were simply withering as they stood, stems erect but petals almost transparent, coming to their natural end.

 

I am a newcomer to picture-taking, but I nonetheless opened my phone to capture the bent-over, yawning blossoms, and I took a dozen quick shots, none of them particularly well framed. And then I shoved the entire vase-ful of tulips (but not the vase) into a plastic bag for composting. Bye-bye tulips. Farewell Mother's Day for another year.

 

It wasn't until I later read the suggestion that we "see—really see—six things a day" that I realized (I'm always realizing things, have I said?) that taking pictures was no substitute for seeing, quietly and with attention, those tulips in their final disintegration, the stage I love the best.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2023 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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