One of my favorite poetry books is Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore with decorations by Boris Artzybasheff published in 1928. On the opening page is the signature of BaiDzar Shalian, an old family friend who shared her library of treasures.

Tagore is a Bengali poet and winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize of Literature. His poems are magical.

Here are few favorites:

The shy shadow in the garden

loves the sun in silence,

Flowers guess the secret, and smile,

while the leaves whisper.

* * *

The world speaks to me in pictures

My soul answers in music.

* * *

Your smile, my love, like the smell of a

strange flower,

is simple and inexplicable.

* * *

My fancies are fireflies, –

Specks of living light

twinkling in the dark.

The breeze whispers to the lotus,

“What is thy secret?”

“It is myself,” says the lotus,

“Steal it and I disappear!”

Simple and mystical.

By Keri Douglas, writer/photographer, Washington, D.C.