Photo Courtesy of Tey Roberts

SCENT OF JASMINE
--Birthday Poem for Rosa Doner

Your beauty is everywhere.

Your hair, long and gray, hangs like Spanish moss
on the pines in Point Lobos; your eyes have
the quickness of the hummingbird darting
from purple fuchsia to white jasmine;
your voice, the sweetness of a gentle rain,
the sound of raindrops; your body, the grace
of the cypress, limbs twisting and swaying,
dancing, dancing in the morning wind.

No way to tell which birthday: so alive
to each moment, you see with such freshness
the beauty around you; are that beauty,
outside of time, whole, beyond yearly birthdays;
glow with the same spirit that animates
moss and hummingbird, rain and cypress,
the same spirit that fills your garden

with the scent of jasmine.

--Elliot Roberts (1976)

The Creative Edge: The Way of the Arts. Winter 98-99.
Reprinted with permission from the author