‘Fleurs-de-Lys: Patron Saints & Guardian Angels’
What if you were caught up in something that threatened your very being? And didn’t have the means or motivation to conquer it by yourself?
A fellow blogger (very talented!),whom I only know by her blog name, Beadberry, told of her escape from New Orleans ahead of Hurricane Katrina. See the previous post Five Iron Fleurs-de-Lys
The fleurs-de-lys motifs reminded her of symbols of the French-influenced Crescent City (the Saints football team amongst other things )and, in turn, those memories of fleeing the town before catastrophe struck. Someone she knew had pushed her into getting the hell out of there.
I too had a narrow escape from tragedy a couple of years ago, avoiding death only because someone passing by raised the alarm for emergency assistance as I lay prone on a sidewalk.
I still don’t know who that person was, but I consider him or her as a guardian angel.
There really are saints and angels, human, or otherwise maybe, who look out for us, I reckon. You don’t easily forget a brush with tragedy or death; you count yourself lucky for those who actually gave a shit about you in those times.
And symbols bring those memories back home to us, just when we might forget.
Ebb Then Flood 
Thank you. 🙂 I do think about how people enter our lives sometimes. I’ve never had someone intervene for me that directly (or in that immediate a need), but I think we all have at least one story, big or small, of “I needed there to be someone, and someone was there.” The odd thing to me is that I think that could be used to support belief in presdestination, pure randomness and free will, or just about anything in between. Somehow, helping one another manages to be a part of even the most contrary philosophies.
You know, I’ve been meaning to ask and somehow it keeps slipping by me — Is your blog’s title a reference to E.A. Robinson?
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Appreciate your perspective.I don’t try to rationalise these types of external interventions.Beyond my pay scale!
As for the blog title, I’m gonna have to do some research on Mr Robinson.
But the name represents the tidal extremes(obviously).It is on one level about my alcoholism recovery – from that exposed rock bottom to life where there is rush of plentitude, things keep flooding in somewhat miraculously. I am influenced hugely by water and tides as you can see from many of the posts on the blog so the title seemed logical. Subsequently I learnt that “ebb and flood” is a hydroponics system of all things !But mine has “then” rather than “and” in it. Lastly, in the drinking sense,there is irony in the fact that it is a flood of life (mostly outside my contraol)now that I am ‘dry”! I am just grateful to be alive really.
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My poetry brain went directly to this: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44979/mr-floods-party. I think you’ll find similar themes there. Not a happy poem, but one of my favorites.
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No, not the happiest poem but a very good reflection on life as it moves on.
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In the larger context of the town that poem and many others of his are set in, it’s also one hell of a companion to Robinson’s most famous poem, “Richard Cory.”
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Another thing I shall look into,thanks!
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You’re about to receive one of poetry’s great sucker-punches. *laugh* Seriously, though, paired up they’re amazing and wrap together a lot of what Robinson went back to again and again in his work — the mental and emotional isolation of small New England towns, what success and failure mean, and what happens when the shell of quiet dignity cracks.
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