Of the four tall neems that shade my home, I’ve named the two that grow outside the brick compound wall, and are seen inside only at the leaf-level, “the flowering neems.” Or so they seem to be. Located between them is a bougainvillea that has been nurtured for years to grow beyond its usual plant height. Now it rises, an undulating trunk the size of a spool of thread, to the top of the wall where, with thin, Indian plastic rope, its narrow branches are tied to the lower ones of the neems. Seen among the thinly-placed neem leaves, both the bougainvillea’s branches and its bracts are visible, but once among the leafier thicknesses, only the bracts can be seen in trails of rosy beauty. This morning they caused me to pause in my steps.
As I stood admiring the bougainvillea’s beauty, a new question took form. Why am I attracted to obvious beauty more than being open to beauty less apparent? In that moment, I saw the bougainvillea’s beauty only as different from the equally beautiful, but quieter, leafy greenness of the neem.
Since then I have discovered one of Emily Dickenson’s1 poems on beauty.
Beauty crowds me till I die
Beauty mercy have on me
But if I expire today
Let it be in sight of thee—2
My realization is, “In our pausing, the space in time opens us to new receptivity.”
1. Emily Dickenson was a 19th century American poet.
2. Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon, eds., Honoring the Earth (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).