The Tulip on Your Doorstep

All around you, they bloom
in a frenzy of Vermont spring, as if
they know the season here
is brutally short, so the flowering comes

not in a Sunday saunter,
but in a sprint, leaping
from bud to bloom in a riot
that colors the countryside with it’s wildness.

Life becomes a Monet painting,
florid and indistinct, almost too vibrant
for mere mortals,
God’s profligate generosity on display.

You stop. For no reason really.
You stop and close in on the horizons,
so beautifully impressionistic,
and look, really look at the tulip on your doorstep,

and wonder at it’s velvet tapestry of pinks and white,
it’s dancing stamen, yellow and dusty with pollen,
it’s fragile beauty, here for a few short days,
so easily lost in the landscape,

aware that each dot of color
as far as the eye can see,
is equally as beautiful, equally a miracle
that until someone stops, and looks,

is missed.

About this poem

The picture was taken in the garden of the woman I love. Like too many of us, too much of the time, as much as I love spring, too often I simply see the garden, and don’t stop to see the amazing detail of color and texture that each flower, from the most humble to the most showy, has.

In recent years, I have tended to stop more and talk to strangers. At the post office. At the grocery store line. In restaurants. And I am almost always gratified to have people open up, share part of their stories. They cease to become just faces, but people, real people. And life becomes Richer, more vibrant.

And yet, too often we go through life missing the beauty of the people around us, too anxious for the goal, too focused on ourselves, missing the miracles that God surrounds us with, every day.

“Be Still” the Psalmist says. “and know I am God.”   I would add “Be still, and know my people, whom I love.”

Tom