The Lizard

Written at Thursday Group, after a guided meditation in which we were invited to imagine finding a gift under the water, and then transforming into a flower.

My friends told me there was a gift under the water and I imagined something of earthly value—a rare coin, a beautiful ruby or emerald, or maybe one of those fancy watches that keeps working underwater.  Has the Universe brought me the gift of more time?  That would be useful.

But it was a lizard I found living at the bottom of the stream.  A tall lizard with a long tail.  In fact, it was the lizard I’d found on Monday, dead in my pool skimmer.  He’d been trapped there underwater and had suffocated, his poor vulnerable throat turned a midnight blue.  I had felt so sad for him, imagining his panic in his last moments, unable to draw a breath, trapped inside a basket filled with wet and soiled leaves.  So I wished his spirit well, that he might enjoy another incarnation that would bring him some kind of knowledge.  But wait—is knowledge something I should wish on a poor lizard?  Of course, it was something I used to crave when I was young and ambitious.  Now I think peace would be a fine gift, so I wished him peace as I let his body drop into the compost with the leaves.  How surprising it was to find him here, or at least the idea of him was here, living happily and thriving where he couldn’t before, when his earthly form was merely corporeal.  Here he was a small demi-deity, a mini Neptune, reigning in a bubbling brook, his blue throat shining like a string of sapphires.  He thanked me and blessed me and wished that I might know some of the freedom he felt now, but without having to drop my body.

Then he sent me into the forest where I transformed into a rose blossom on the thorny branch of a tall rose tree.  Did the lizard know?  Could he imagine?  Was this somehow his doing?  Magic Lizard, was this your wish for me to become a rose?  The most beautiful of flowers, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Sacred Goddess of Mount Carmel:  this is the Rose.  The most beautiful yet most delicate, most vulnerable of flowers, scent so sweet, petals so soft, we want to eat them like candy, like butter cream frosting on our fingertips.  So now I perch on my blossoming tree in the forest, listening to the night geese, black and white in moonlight, amazed at my fortune, here in a community of flowers, stunned at the beauty of our own blessed souls.