Canadian Poet Ponders Life's Deepest Mysteries

In her aptly titled book Leaves of a Diary, Canadian poet Flavia Cosma apparently had the Tree of Life in mind, for the poems in her captivating work much like leaves on a tree offer us those momentary glimpses and sensations briefly felt and viewed which hide and yet reveal the hidden testament of life. Through the transient sensations of reality, the poet lures her readership deep into the mystic world of her eternity. As she says in one of her first poems:

"The warm wind of the golden autumn...
...for a split second envelops the room
Like a wing of an angel
In flight."

Brief and fleeting are the moments she describes as continually she melds the forces of nature with human reality while seeking the fairy tale element in all living things: the sleeping Kingdom that wakens and reveals the truth and separates it from the geometric lie.

"If we could regain
The keys to the tall gates" she says
We'd open them and...
We would understand everything...
the past,
And the future all at once."

Either consciously or (more likely) unconsciously, through her intuitive poetic powers, Flavia has associated herself with the ancient lady of divine wisdom: She sorrows for the dying things on earth and rejoices in their resurrected spirit every spring but finds the world of mankind sadly out of tune with them.

Very long ago (according to a people known as the Sumerians) before there was a heaven or an earth, there was a written code of life, which had the power to make anyone who found it wise, for it held within itself the secret knowledge of everything. The person therefore finding it, immediately would understand all things at once -- the past, the present, and the future -- because it was the code of life itself, which caused all things to be. I could not help but think of this as I read Flavia's charming book of poetry.

In poems 39, 40 and 41, we find a part of that secret wisdom revealed when the poet descrivves herself and other souls she meets as angels fallen out of heaven, who must learn to follow the straight line through this world's confusing labyrinth. Then afterwards, she fittingly observes herself to be much like a seed that sprouts with new life, from the heavy snow.

Flavia Cosma's whole book has been designed to waken sleeping consciousness. Every poem (like a leaf upon the trees of life) can only be appreciated in its unity with all other leaves. Her whole book is a single unit in which each poem serves to lead the reader through the pain, suffering and loneliness of life while searching for truth's hidden mysteries which serve to make life meaningful and beautiful, yet remain to be discovered in that continual renewal and rebirth of life.