21 May

we traded wabi-sabi treasures

~

i gave her 

a heart shaped piece of sea glass

and purple, and pink, and cobalt blue

and bright yellow goldfinch feathers

from a pile an old owl had left on a wooded path

i walked down one afternoon last fall

~

she gave me 

aqua sea glass that had been melted in a beach fire 

one night long ago

and swept away into the waves of the next high tide

tossed and turned about

and left all melted and bumpy 

on the shore she was treasure hunting

and a fairy table

and an peach pit washed clean by the sea

 ~

once she was my little girl-child

tottering down the path and across the sand

her sweet little hands and tiny fingers

would pick up a pebble or a bit of seashell, or a curvy stick

and stop and turn to me

~look mama, look what I found for you~

~

diamonds, and rubies, and opals, and pearls

are dust beneath my feet

so I take the peach pit from her grown woman's graceful hands 

and long slender fingers

and I place it on the fairy table in the kitchen window

and every morning see it there 

wabi-sabi glistening 

in the morning sunlight

Wabi-sabi is an aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. According to the author, this relatively new term builds on earlier Japanese concepts of sabi (taking pleasure in things that are old, faded, and lonely), and wabi (from the wabi tea room, which was rustic and small).
The author uses a variety of different phrases to describe the idea of wabi-sabi, including:

• Beauty at the edge of nothingness
• The aestheticization of poverty
• Imperfection
• A beauty of things withered
• Beauty hidden in the tentative and ephemeral
• Aesthetic accommodation to the catastrophic realities of the day 
• definition of wabi-sabi from shades of meaning