BEAUTY

Beauty is the internal living flame that illuminates what we belong to.

Remembering the beauty of my mother, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Teseny Rieb, on the occasion of her birth, 78 Septembers ago. Though the hangers in her closet hung bare, disrobed of her flowery pleated dresses and soft cotton cardigans weeks after my 18th birthday, her presence lives inside of my own inner recognition, beaming in the eternal candle’s glow.

Beauty is…

the twirling baton on a warm spring day…

the gentle smile that softens troubled hearts…

leaning quietly on the edge of what promises to steady us…

and gracefully shifts within the bright folds, poised above the shadow self, pure grace draped in pearls…

it is the buttery yellow cardigan embracing our curves, inviting us to open only as deep as we’re willing to reveal …

the small treasures we hold too precious to be left behind.

“Beauty is the harvest of presence that lives inside us where the imagination becomes a bridge between the here and the there, between then and now”

David Whyte

© Deborah Garcia 2021, All rights reserved
Images by Deborah Garcia private collection