May 19, 2023

Good morning!

It’s Friday, and can you believe this flower? It’s a rhodora, or rhododendron canadense. And while it might look like something out of a garden catalog, it was not planted here by human hands. This native bush grows wild in the wetlands bordering our pond.

Most of the year, the rhodora is rather unremarkable. But its flowers are the stars of this brief hammock period between the end of the spring bulbs and the start of the lilacs.

I’m not the only one who loves rhodoras. Ralph Waldo Emerson was so moved that he wrote a poem about them when he was just 31 years old. It’s called “The Rhodora, On Being Asked, Whence Is the Flower."

Shall we indulge in a little poetry this morning?

“In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.”

I keep coming back to the phrase, “If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for Being.” Respiteers, shall we discuss the nature of beauty this afternoon? Check your inbox right before 2pm for the magic link.

Onwards,

Clara