Friday, November 21, 2003
It is a wond’rous thing, a flower is. Trees are green, with sturdy thick trunks. Leaves and seeds, green and in the autumn, colours that a sunset would borrow if it were missing a shade. But trees are spindly and bare in the winter, with naked branches opening yearning arms to the sun and sky for the kiss of spring, the warm breath of fruition. Trees are dependable and trees are strong. Trees will shade friend and foe alike, and will drop its fruit for anyone who asks.But a flower. Ah, a flower.
A flower will bloom into a riot of fragrance and colour suddenly, overnight, once a year. Only once a year, and that too for a skilful hand in the garden. Not any old fool can grow flowers. Flowers need attention, props to curl their tendrils against, other flowers to compete and plants to flirt with. Flowers bloom for love, for what reason does a flower have to bloom, but regeneration, and creation of fruit from a bud? A flower will swirl its skirts daintily in the wind, teasing the bees and the butterflies to come visit her. A flower will coyly furl its petals at dusk, leaving its admirers to count the minutes till dawn, when she will emerge again, radiant in the crystal glimmer of night’s dew. A flower will drink in the sun and the soil’s goodness and in itself create the image of everything divine nature has to offer- and at the height of its glory and beauty, wither quietly in the night. A flower will slip away from your fingers quicker than you can draw breath; it life-force, its pomp and show will fade into a small brown husk just as suddenly as it unveiled itself in its splendour, for a flower is such a fragile web of transparent tint and innocent joy. It lifts its face to the world in such a frank expectation of adoration one cannot help but stop and loudly exclaim one’s awe.
Flowers need to be humoured, you see.
Mina at 9:32 PM
