failure

Untitled, a photo by .Trevor Triano on Flickr.

I just failed… yet, oddly, I feel great!

Botany Lesson by Philomena van Rijswijk

296/365, a photo by minato

I will knock on the door of Room 22.
You have told me you will be there with lilies.
Blue lilies.
I know the sort.
Agapanthus.
You know why,
and I know why.

We will walk along the esplanade beside the sand
to the end, where there is a sward
of green, green, how I love you green…
(verde, verde, que te quiero verde…)
and I will whisper to the grass.
You know why I will whisper,
and I know why.

We will imagine we are with Odysseus and his crew.
We will cross the foot-bridge,
and we will find ourselves stranded
on an island of Lotophagi (Lotus Eaters).
You will never want to leave.
You know why.

We will spend out time
studying the sundew
and its sticky heart.
We will follow the path
used by the bees…

and I know why.

The Real Rooms of My House by Philomena van Rijswijk

Untitled, a photo by ikebana, on Flickr.

Mercedes Sosa’s purple crushed velvet voice entreating
a darkening Golgotha,
and the sky faded to a salt-encrusted fishing-boat blue…
carrying a burden of clouds as slow as old angels
returning to earth.

How can you say you are not real?
Are those tired and lumbering clouds,
overflowing with a sacred sea-froth light,
not real either?

Is the flat and empty blue of forever amen
behind the clouds not real?
Is it a painted back-drop on a pineboard pallet,
perhaps?

And Mercedes Sosa,
singing her ‘Misa Criolla’, sobbing her ‘Kyrie’…
she is not here, in this room,
but is she not real?
I can hear the caustic tears, the spilled blood,
the sacrificial anguish
and the celestial spaciousness
in her pained dirge…
but is she real?

O, my dear, invisible friend,
you have been more real to me
in these weeks of terrible obsession
than the old timber table and chairs
I climbed on as an infant,
and that still remain, paintless, now,
and solid,
in the real rooms of my house.