The Yellow Butterfly: A Wonderful Norm

Last week, loveliness passed away. I hadn't seen T.T. for many years. Yet something beckoned me to attend her memorial. It wasn't to say good bye, but to reaffirm the things that she reminded me of, and are mainstays of my life. Poetry, music, art and wonder. Some might have said that T.T was eccentric, dismissed as folly a woman who would sweetly sing arias while watering her yard, disdain sugar, clean her bathroom with lemon, wear hats and scarves even in summer and take in so many stray cats and dogs that one couldn't keep track of their names.

But how can anyone dismiss a life well lived? As I sat in her the shade of a giant pepper tree in her backyard, I was surrounded by her paintings. I listened to a recording of her singing a song, reciting haiku, saw the release of butterflies and witnessed the grace of her four children.
For Jobie
T.T.
Cold, grey morning
she walks,
blue jacket, TEVA sandals and socks.
Curly hair captured under a hat,
neck swathed in a knitted
muffler that catches the wind.
She approaches my house
where the agapanthus
beats east and west
and begins
to sing
La Boheme.
Warm, sunny morning
she walks.