Left -  Rosa 'Sombreuil' & Right - Rosa 'Margaret Merril' 18 September 2022

OPOSICIONES FONOLÓGICAS

posa

pesa

pisa

pasa

¡qué poco te exige la vida!

 Efraín Jara Idrovo (Cuenca, 26 de febrero de 1926​-Ib., 8 de abril de 2018)

It is impossible to properly translate the above my most frequent discovery of an Ecuadorean poet and writer. The poem in Spanish works with similar for-letter words that begin with p. Here is a translation of the meaning.

Poses, weighs, steps. Passes – How little life demands from you!

In finding this poet at this later stage of my life (80), it feels like opening the window in a stuffy and hot car. The poem has really nothing to do with my scan of the white roses in bloom in today’s garden.

But it the poem and the roses do make me aware of Idrovo’s statement that life demands little of one.

My mentor Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. told our class one day in the late 50s in Austin,  that we were born with but one goal/purpose. This was to find out what we could do well. Our path then became one of doing it. He warned us that in not doing it this would amount to a tragedy.

 Looking at my career in photography which now seems to have been an easy one, perhaps it happened because of that awareness that Brother Edwin inculcated in me.

At my age I could be watching TV or sleeping, or as I often told Rosemary  "WTD" (waiting to die). Finding happiness in cutting the white roses today; arranging them on my scanner bed, (Oxford comma!) and then going through the entertaining process makes me reflect on the luck of having met Brother Edwin and the fact that my Rosemary loved white roses.

It is as simple as that and the Ecuadorean poet would certainly agree and with very few words.