Flowers For Socrates

Updated – originally posted on December 25, 2015

by Nona Blyth Cloud

Wabi–sabi (侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.”

For example, rust, asymmetric shapes, age lines — life’s textures.

So many people feel pressure to make the holidays “perfect.” For a lot of Americans, it may be the only time we see our far-flung family members or long-time friends, so we make unreasonable demands on ourselves to make the time together “special” — frantically planning everything down to the last detail, when all that really matters is being together, not what we do or how much we eat.

So here are some poems about unexpected events or sudden insights during the holiday season, the impermanent imperfections that we find, years later, are the very things which make these days memorable and beautiful.

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“Your Luck Is About To Change”
(A fortune cookie)

by Susan Elizabeth Howe

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking
his legs in the air. I won’t give in
to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog,
or even the neighbors’ Nativity.
Their four-year-old has arranged
his whole legion of dinosaurs
so they, too, worship the child,
joining the cow and sheep. Or else,
ultimate mortals, they’ve come to eat
ox and camel, Mary and Joseph,
then savor the newborn babe.

Susan Elizabeth Howe has published
two poetry collections: Salt and Stone Spirits

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