Beauty in 'unstoppable decay'

Again perhaps, one of those coincidences - those serendipious coincidences. My last blog entry was about seeing failure as okay, as part of who and what we are and what part it plays as our journey unfolds. Then this morning I read another of Mary Oliver's poems that seems to me to speak to that.

The poem is called The Ponds* and she is in wonder at the beauty of the lilies in the pond with the light shining upon them. She describes what she sees as 'rich and wild'. But then, she startles a bit by saying

                  But what in this world
                  is perfect?

and goes on to describe the detail in this vision of beauty: for instance, the ones that are lopsided, or have a blight, or have been nibbled at or are full of their own unstoppable decay.

What comes next was another of those moments when I came to a stop and pondered:

                  Still, what I want in my life
                  is to be willing
                  to be dazzled - 
                  to cast aside the weight of facts

                  And maybe even
                  to float a little
                  above this difficult world
                  I want to believe I am looking

                  into the white fire of a great mystery.
                  I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing
                  that the light is everything - that it is more than the sum
                  of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do. 

This all then, speaks to me again of a way of viewing imperfection, failure (in a sense) as part of the very fabric of life; part even of what makes us and all life beautiful. Again, I feel we can help each other see this and believe it. We can help each other to see beauty even in the 'unstoppable decay' which is in all our lives.  

  
 *(Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992)