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Sweet tamarind pods stick to the warm black tarmac
where fortunate doves wander about in the shade,
trilling to themselves, and each other.

Either something strikes them as funny,
or they just love their easy lives.

Certainly, they sound so different from their
modest cousins, cooing sadly in colder places.

Born here in Paradise, these birds wear blue
eye shadow every day, and not just on weekends.

Late afternoon finds me in their lazy midst,
hair wet and curling, sand stuck to my bare, tanned feet.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
Seated beside you in a bicycle rickshaw,
eventide of your last New Delhi day
gathering itself all around us.

Silk from my sari encircles my head,
shoulders warmed by a winter shawl.
Your heavy beige mantle and dhoti,
frame a man as tall as a tree, at least to me.

There is no need for words.

I may have been singing a bhajan to you,
just quietly, as shop lights came on
in the deepening blue.

Perfection finds us in the briefest of moments.

Wherever you are now, timelessness
governs friendships formed
in the Land of the Veda.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
One beam of morning light
blesses a simple kitchen apron.

Standing here, and only here,
the whole world is made
of small, white petals.

On a day much like today,
infinity became my home.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
East reaches out its petaled fingertips
meeting West in the center of the garden.

If only we knew then what we know now.

Trust the generations.

We are here to breathe. And to love.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
You know the feeling, dear
Lover of Words.

Sounds of syllables
rolling through your mind
like deliciousness itself.

Sometimes it's just the sound, then a glint
of meaning smiles at you, inviting you.

Lifting it gently, like a sleeping child
you listen for potential phrases,
sentences emerging from within her dreams.

Tuck the covers lightly
around your new poem child,
and may the Muse of Words
favor her, and you.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
Arrays of stars land softly
on this thick bed of pine needles
under your graciously reaching tree,
and we see impossibly blue, miniature
flowers with centers of infinite white.

Tunneling underground, more
have been born over the decades
since you planted their mothers and fathers
by hand, here in this garden that has become
a secret woodland, even in the middle of town.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
Whispered voices, my parents, excitedly
hushing each other in the driveway.

Inside now, tiptoeing into the kitchen
rustling packages meant for my
brothers and me, from the Easter Bunny.

Upstairs, in my little bunk bed by the window
I am old enough to know what's what,
young enough to be enchanted by the magic
created again and again by pure, devoted love.

(And may it always be so.)

Floating to find me on the humid April
air, the heady fragrance of hyacinth
establishes his presence with certainty.
What other scent is more evocative of Spring?

Magical beings, as I knew them, always
had a flair for elegance, and kindness.

Downstairs, the loving, secret bustling
continues with detailed purpose,
as layer upon layer of the magic emerges.

Earlier that day, at least one brother and I
would have searched our woods for
several colors and kinds of moss and lichen
to build a miniature world on the kitchen table.

It was this welcoming world of soft green hills
and perhaps a tiny foil pond that was meant
to honor and invite our esteemed, invisible friend.

My parent's artful introduction of glistening
multi-colored chocolate eggs, Perugina bunnies
from the Cafe Aurora, and the three hyacinths
to plant later in the garden were their gentle
responding gestures in this sacred pact,
all in the name of magic, all
in the name of holy love,
its very own,
Infinite Self.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
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