Every year at least once I remember the lines of this poem. Usually it’s during Autumn in the dazzling russets of dying leaves. This year it was while walking in Mount Congreve during Magnolia time. Magnolias were flowering on dark branches and there are some ancient specimens there, but it was the dying petals strewn underfoot that brought the poem to mind again.
I wish I understood the beauty
in leaves falling.
To whom are we beautiful
as we go?
~David Ignatow
If there is such a thing as a Wabi-sabi poem, maybe this is it. Wabi-sabi is a Japanese way of seeing which honours the beauty of transience, imperfection and the incomplete. Think about your favourite old chair, a cracked cup you have stuck back together, an old silk scarf? I saw it in my elderly Grandmother, the most beautiful wrinkly woman, oozing love and elegance. I find it now in ragged hedgerows and vilified dandelions, and here in trampled petals.
How freeing it can be to strive for imperfection! Being 60 now I hope it includes ageing gracefully, fading softly, avoiding at all costs the lethal stuff on offer from the botox pushers and their like? Do you have a place in your heart for Wabi-sabi?
I so adore wabi-sabi. I learned about it several years ago and was elated to finally put a "name" on a concept that I loved, but didn't know what to call it! And what I'm loving about aging is exactly wabi-sabi…finding comfort in our own skin!
It's very much a part of the whole contemplative photography thing too isn't it? Questioning ideas of beauty and perfection…x
I adore wabi-sabi and really love embracing the imperfection…it gives me license to let life happen and for aging to be OK…I think since studying a bit about it this January, I have been working through issues and was inspired in poetry and prose…
Donna….great minds think alike…..I just realised that we are both on a very similar track….AGAIN!!
Perfect in our imperfection. Lovely Catherine. Thank you also for the very interesting Wabi Sabi link. You continue to lead me on fascinating journeys!
( How funny now I come to think of it…I just deleted my comment above because I wrote my instead of me. Perhaps I should have left it, imperfect as it was! )
Jane! I love that and that's the very point, it's always a bit of a challenge to accept the imperfections XX
There is certainly so much beauty in imperfection! If everything were "perfect," nothing would be distinguishable from the rest. I think this is most important in how we see each other as people. Each and every person created with intrinsic value and beauty…
Mary Anne, I agree it relates to so much of life not just our oldest cosiest armchair. I love that "each and every person created with intrinsic value and beauty…" thank you so much for your lovely words…..
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