The world opened

Mountain Laurel blooming

I was five when,
riding a country road in the family Ford,
I exclaimed with surprise and delight
and Dad stopped the car.
The laurel was blooming!
Throwing the car door open,
my parents solicitous of me,
I climbed a bank as close as I could
and gazed within the blossom.
The ten-sided blooms,
deep pink turning to white as they opened,
drew me into their world.
As the petals widened,
releasing their power to the wind
and the pollinators,
the one bloom made, not a world,
but a universe.
My five-year-old self
gazed into this tiny mandala
of white touched with magenta.
I rejoiced in Her being,
the laurel somehow freeing me,
calling to me, “Remember!
Here in my petaled calyx
is the beauty for which you were born!”
Mom and Dad called me back to the car,
and we went on our way,
forever changed.

Annelinde Metzner
May 23, 2015