Looking beauty in the eye

This morning the tulips needed to come closer.

As I sat down to eat breakfast, I caught sight of the vase of tulips high up on the shelf behind me.

I don’t often buy cut flowers, but at the end of winter they are precious for their promises of lighter times. The shop owner asked if they were a gift: “to myself.”  She wrapped them into simple paper, tied with string.

As I carried them home, they somehow lessened the heavy weight of the bag in my other hand. A woman sitting by the door of my building smiled at my bunch of tight-curled tulips. We shared our awareness of the joy waiting.

I trimmed the ends, placed them in water. And the tulips did their thing. Opened, deepened their delicate colouring, leaned this way and that, twisted a little.

This morning I needed the tulips close as I ate my breakfast. To experience their aliveness and energy in my visual space. To be present at eye level, like paintings in an exhibition, that, hung at eye-height, invite each of us, one by one, to see.

Reaching towards me and away, curling white petals shaded with pink and sometimes a remainder of green, furry yellow stamens, leaves creating negative spaces and the noise of the city a shade quieter when seen in the spaces between.

Now I see you, really see you ~ eye-to-eye