The Moment Between Skips 1 comments

By Peggy Rosenthal

So I’m sitting here in the luscious backyard desert-garden of the cottage we’ve rented in Tucson for the winter...watching birds peck at the bird-feeder and the bright desert sun flicker onto the grapefruits nearly ripe in the bushy tree across the garden.

I’m sitting here reading poetry for the review I’ll be writing for the spring issue of Image (stay tuned) but between poems I look up at these astoundingly pleasing surroundings and I think: how do I merit the grace of this beautiful and profoundly comfortable place?

Of course, I don’t merit it. (Oops, a lizard just scurried up a tree-trunk.) So maybe the question should be: is there any way I can adequately respond to this graced gift?

Adequately, no. But the poem I’ve just read (after watching the lizard scoot back down) suggests some images for a response. The poem is “Dear Dangerous, How Do You Explain It,” from Oberlin professor Kazim Ali’s new collection The Fortieth Day.

How does one skip a stone on water,
the moment between skips.

The wonder of life holds its breath in that couplet: can we catch the moment between skips? The poem ends:

how lucky we were to have lived
in the world —

And that’s how I feel today, at this moment between skips, in this garden.

I don’t feel “lucky”—that is, graced—every day. Some days are difficult, uncomfortable, cranky. But here in this garden....

This garden is a work of art. My landlord’s avocation is gardening, and to create an aesthetically pleasing garden is to create an art work. Desert gardens have their special challenge, because they must be minimalist: gravel for the grounding, a cactus here, another type of cactus over in that corner, a few trellised plantings in large clay pots unobtrusively watered through an auto-timed drip system.

And of course to sit in a garden that I’m not responsible for maintaining adds immeasurably to the peace of being here. In my own garden at home in upstate New York, I can’t sit without seeing something that needs weeding, staking, dead-heading.

In Islam, beautifully crafted gardens are symbolic of the afterlife promised to the blessed, and I can see why. (The sun has now shifted to alight on a lone flower pot’s single pink bloom.) Sitting within a garden, one is sitting within a work of art — and all true art is a reflection of God’s creativity.

Most forms of art offer us a hint of God’s creativity through a single one of our senses: the eye, the ear, taste or touch. But as in architecture, in a garden nearly all our senses are activated. Our awareness is heightened: the awareness of living in God’s created world.

The only appropriate response to grace like this seems to be: Gratitude.

Psalm 103 comes to my lips, to my fingers on this keyboard:

My soul, give thanks to the Lord,
All my being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord,
And never forget all his blessings.

Actually, I’ve done a re-writing of this psalm—which I’ll save for another post. Again, stay tuned.