Sweet Peas

Isn’t it a miracle how a drab stucco wall can blossom

into a shimmering curtain of colour,

a vibrant, undulating tapestry ,

to tantalize the eye and nourish the heart.

A fragrant flowered memory ,

each petal a marvel of symmetry,

beguilingly crafted, honed precisely to create a flawless sculpture,

a harmony of arcs, shadow and pastel perfection.

How can such happiness grow out of bare brown dirt?

In hope round wrinkled seeds soaked, saturated and lovingly sown,

deluged by spring downpours, pummelled by gales force

bent but not broken,

tender shoots grasping thin life lines,

matured under searing sun into stedfast stems.

It was more than the seed,

the hope, the promise,

More than the careful toil

to weed and trellis,

More than sun and soil

surviving frost or tempest

Clinging faithfully, willfully, lastingly, lovingly intertwined

sheltering and supporting,

growing steadily, surely,

envisioning the fruition of the climb.

Sweet Peas,

not a solitary bloom but a chorus,

borne not by happenstance,

but a miracle nonetheless.

This is happiness.

Rebecca Stewart

This poem takes me back almost four decades to a California spring day and a wall of sweet peas growing against the new stucco of our renovated home. They had survived an unseasonal frost and gale force Santa Ana winds, but were as luxuriant as ever. I wish I could say that over the decades I have always been able to weather life's vicissitudes with such grace. But that is still the goal, not the reality.