11:11 Angels Message Board

Pavithra is one of my very favorite poet/writers. After a hiatus of some years she is once again posting almost daily. I'd like to introduce you all to her work with this one recent little story.

Neha is the recently-turned-eight-year-old across the street. Every encounter with her is an edifying experience. A few mornings ago she skipped over with her grandmother and our share of homemade Divali sweets. I was en route, basket in hand, to our back yard, to gather morning flowers. “Pavithrakka can I also come? I am loving flauv-ers very much,” says Neha, in her fun, formal, not always grammatically correct, but unfailing expressive English. “Of course,” I say, and we head towards the Coral Jasmine tree out back- a tall, slender trunked beauty that all year round rains fragrant white blossoms with bright coral stalks onto the grass each night. Gathering these flowers each morning is a ritual of enchantment. Magic is born in the presence of such unreasonable, unravished beauty.

I wish I could say that such a poetic start to the morning renders one invincible to all the daily demons of impatience, and indignation, of I-ness and My-ness and My-Soul-Is-A-Squashed-Tomato-ness. But apparently you can’t buy that kind of invincibility with a basketful of flowers. It takes a modicum more diligence, more vigilance than that. But what gathering a morning basketful of flowers can provide is- a sort of sacred space to set the tone of the day. There’s a Tibetan phrase for this that I learnt recently– penpa tang. And I have found that setting that sacred space does make a difference in how I live my day- or at least in my awareness of how I live my day. Or perhaps I’m just trying to dignify my self-proclaimed vocation, of, à la James Kavanugh, being born to–

Penpa Tang-ing with Neha — by Pavithra K. Mehta

https://thepoetryof.blog/2022/06/17/pen ... with-neha/

If you like her work the blog home page is https://thepoetryof.blog where you can sign up for an email notification of new posts.

Here's her latest...

943 — by Pavithra K. Mehta

To be indiscriminately captivated means to be at home anywhere/everywhere/nowhere. Why fault this faculty? Single-mindedness is so often misapplied. Would she tell the bumblebee not to be so flighty? Would she command the butterfly to be less fickle? So much depends on their roving eyes, their ravishing way.

Her life, and theirs.

To be one with the Ten Thousand Things is her true nature. This is not dispersion. It is the end of a long exile. After living cramped in the dingy attic, like the blighted stepchild of fairytales-- a return to a vast homeland.​

The heart, she discovered with a start, has no fixed address.

That precious story touched my heart this morning...
Thank you, Welles.

Sandy