In Equilibrium

Monday morning was super weather. The sun was out but there was considerable rain also, and the heat and humidity of Colombo mid-morning was lifted by the coolness of the drops of liquid breaking free of pregnant clouds. Such a long and ineffective sentence.

I sat on the front steps leading up to the old Walawwa where I’d spent the night, gazing through the lush mango and jack leaves now greener and looking heavier, for the water. Once in a while I’d suddenly find myself staring into the rays of rotating sun whizzing momentarily through the foliage to stun me. The gravel is purple-brown-orange. The picture is simple and serenely gorgeous.

Closer to me is a row of little plants with dripping flowers and rebellious buds. The tiny leaves are so gently and effortlessly curved that I wonder, as I often do, whether God caresses each and every one to just that way each morning. What love that must be!

The rain has stopped. On two of those God-finger-curled leaves I find droplets of water growing. This is an amazing thing. I think, “how many photographs I’ve seen with this exact image focused, shot, color-balanced, brightness-edited and published!” There is something so lethargic, stagnant and still about these pictures; even the ones with the bright sparkle hiding inside the droplet. How they all fail to capture the energy and intensity of the connection; the inevitable dependency.  But this leaf and this droplet are so flabbergastingly alive!

I am jubilant because there is life!

And then I think, which is it? Does the glittering droplet cling desperately to the thinning end of the leaf, or does it strain and strain to be free? Does it alone, or do they both?