Pink Flip-Flops ...

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Below is quite possibly my most very favorite poem ... It comes to me - full and rich - in the oddest of moments.

This time I had slogged through the mud of the recently tree-cleared and re-seeded side yard after a thorough watering - wearing these - my "at the ready, by the back door" flip flops. A puddle had collected in a dip in the driveway (our Texas foundations are want to rise and fall) and I happily used it to splash away the mud from my toes and left the sandals floating - to soak away the rest of the muck.

There - standing in the sunwarmed puddle - in the beautiful light at the dimming of the day - still a little damp from dodging the sprinklers to follow a monarch butterfly around the yard - I thought to myself "This day has become a presence to me."

Granted - I had no great charge to answer for this particular day other than preparing meals and doing for my family - but once again I was awakened - to do it with a whole self and a full heart.

- VARIATION ON A THEME BY RILKE -(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

- DENISE LEVERTOV -