For Christmas

 For Christmas this year I would like to buy my daughter a book of Pablo Neruda poems. I bought a Rumi journal for her one year,  and since it is laying conspicuously under the coffee table, and I have hardly seen her in two years, I, resentful, wish to buy her something she can under appreciate and abandon again for Christmas.

I just read Pablo Neruda. I opened a collection randomly and found a short piece of prose. I was underwhelmed by his writing in prose. It was overimagined and under illustrated. But his magic happened! He told us something, a truth. In just a few paragraphs I saw deep into the man whose poetry is so inspiring to so many people, and he shared his visionary experience with me so well I felt something, and that at my age is highly rewarding.

When I was young, I was a totally different person. I feel like my soul is calloused. I used to have such a spectrum of emotions, rich and warm, like summertime. Now I'm cold and baren. I can see the season changing, the setting of the sun. 

Mr. Neruda, in his quick stroke, set up a lifetime. A hazy memory, of which anyone can relate, being formed in one crystallized encounter. One flash of light from the corner of the minds eye, a glimpse into the self.

A beautiful man, Neruda sees as a true poet. His words inexplicably perfect, his intuition that unpremeditated art which flows from the breast of all living beings. He sees through the heart of an artist, that rare phenomenon that calls out from each of us but is only born in a few. 

So where might this genius lie, when neglected and unappreciated by that same power which fires the belly of youth? Where might soft words go unread?