The Imperfection of Lillies

Having returned a few days ago from my summer canoe trip, I feel that I am still half in the world of the wild.

Communing with the water and the trees and the sky and myself, changes me.

I couldn’t sleep the first night I returned home. I was deeply tired but I missed the call of the owl and the loon, the quiet paddling of the Merganser duck family and the sifting of the pine needles onto my tent.

And the water lilies…year after year, no matter how many times I paddle through them I am still enchanted by their beauty. Their flawed perfection is described beautifully in the poem, “Ponds” by Mary Oliver.

The Ponds (Mary Oliver)

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them –
the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch
only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?
I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided –
and that one wears an orange blight –
and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled away –
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing –
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

I’m wishing you a wonder filled summer.