dVerse Poets Pub – Haibun Monday

Today for Haibun Monday, Bjorn is giving us the prompt – Beauty in Decay. Assisting him with this is a wonderful photographer, Susan Judd. We are to choose one of her photos and write the haibun around it and the prompt. You can see more of her work and more about her at http://suejudd.com/ Come join us for Haibun Monday – that wonderful Japanese form that is a combination of poetic prose with a haiku at the end.

Decay Transformed
Dried daffodils always make me think of my father. He was a loving and gentle man who enjoyed growing things – flowers, kitchen garden, puppies, kittens, and lively little girls. Before I left home to live in Philadelphia, he had a series of heart attacks and finally, a multiple bypass surgery. The doctors told him if he ever had another attack, that would be it and that he had an expectation of at most, five years added to his life. Being my father, after he had healed physically, he went back to his life with no bitterness or fear. He lived every day like the miracle it was. One of his projects was to plant in the fall, several hundred additional assorted daffodils on the grounds of our home.

Early one morning in late February, my mother called me. My father had been taken to the hospital with a heart attack. I booked a flight to go home immediately. Our neighbor met me at the airport and took me home and waited for a few minutes while I through down my baggage and then took me to the hospital. My father died within a couple of days. When we returned home after funeral arrangements were made, I noticed for the first time, hundreds of daffodils in containers – everywhere. My mother said they had bloomed early and that a heavy frost had been forecast. My father was such, that he could not bear even flowers to suffer and so he had pulled every bloom and brought them into the house. Later, he was taken to the hospital.

When I returned to Philadelphia, I took a huge bouquet of daffodils with me. I watched them wither in their vase. I could not bear to throw them away. I watched as they dried and became a different type of beauty – fragile, ethereal. I kept those dried daffodils until they finally turned to dust. My father transformed everything he touched into beauty. He gave his love to everything he touched. Today, in memory of my father, every time I bring daffodils into my home, I let them dry – to go the full cycle with love and joy, as he lived his life.

dried daffodil blooms
beauty transformed – light shines through
In spite of dried death.

used by permission, copyright Sue Judd