SUMMER ABSTRACT

digitally-altered photo by S. Auberle

"A person's life purpose is nothing more than
to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love,
or passionate work, those one or two images in the
presence of which his heart first opened."
- Albert Camus

Back from evening bike ride under a sky filled with circling
gulls, beneath the new crescent moon. Glass of wine
for sunset-watching through my peephole of trees. Music
from Zorba the Greek--passionate and tender enough for
this drama of colors turning from lemon to old gold to
orange to red to rose to pink. Exquisite sadness--the good
kind that aches, all down your body, at the joy and brevity
of it all. A friend asked me today--how the hell do I find
it when I don't even know what it is?

She knows I've found it here, in this place, at least a part.
Maybe all, I don't know. Maybe it will change. Maybe life
is just an abstract painting. We see different things
everytime we look. Maybe there really is no it. Just these
tender, exquisite moments that float into our lives when
we're really being blessed.

One of my first poems, written when I was young and had
not done much living, was about happiness being a butterfly
that we mostly see floating ahead, above, just out of reach,
but then, all of a sudden it lands on you and you don't
breathe, and you don't move and you think you can keep
it like this, and then off it goes and you're left, breathless.

I saw a small butterfly today, floating dreamlike, just ahead
of me. and then it did something I've never seen a butterfly
do--it landed in old, brown grasses just at my feet. Folded
bright wings and disappeared. The outside of its wings were
a perfect pattern of the grasses where it rested. And, though
I'd seen the butterfly perfectly an instant ago, now it had
disappeared. I knelt to watch. It felt like praying--for
happiness, maybe this time to last. But then dull, brown
wings flickered into orange and it lifted, once again,
just above and beyond my reach.

For this moment, it was enough, will always be enough,
because these moments are all--and everything,
we'll ever have.

- mimi