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Posts Tagged ‘bloom’

Snapdragons in Autumn

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 3, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
They no longer bloom,
but the snapdragons bring
an extravagance of dark green
to the garden otherwise bare.
I almost missed this pleasure,
poised as I was to rip them
from the soil when frost took
all the flowers. But there
is something past bloom
in me that thrills now
to see them there, growing
for the sake of growing,
tall and fully leafed out. Grow
while you can, they seem to say.
Until it’s all over, don’t you
ever stop with your growing.

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Just When I Ache with How Much Humans Can Hate

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 28, 2025| 8 Comments »




Nina takes me by the hand
and runs with me through the garden,
earthen angel in a pale green skirt,
her long silver hair flies behind her,
and I laugh as she tugs me
past snap peas, arugula, broccoli,
and red lettuce leaves. We duck
beneath the rose-covered bower and
emerge into the open lawn, pass deep,
deep purple clematis, to enter another
garden where the evening primrose
flowers that bloom for only one night
are blooming, eight bright
yellow blooms! For each of them,
this is the night. It’s so fleeting,
this beauty. So fleeting, this life.
Long after I leave the garden, I think
of Nina tending these primroses—
so much work for such brief joy.
Or is the secret to know the work
itself is the lasting spark—putting
ourselves in service to something
that blooms in the dark.

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Almond Blossom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 28, 2022| 6 Comments »



inspired by Almond Blossom by Vincent van Gogh and music by Kayleen Asbo by the same name

I want to hang a painting
of almond blossoms
above your bed
so when you wake
the first thing you see
are delicate white petals
and a sky a thousand shades of blue.
I want you to wake every morning
into an ever-emerging sense of spring—
wake into sunshine,
wake to a world of splendor
and extravagant blossoming.
 
Of course, the fall.
Of course, the struggle.
Of course, the difficult days.
And of course, the almond blossoms,
painted in creams, pinks and greens
each one an insistent grace note
that lingers beyond its season,
promising something improbable
and utterly necessary,
like ever-blooming beauty,
like the light and airy perfume of hope.

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Things that Bloom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 20, 2020| 2 Comments »

 

 

I’m thinking of silence, how when it opens,

it changes the room with its fragrance.

 

How frost can make a garden

of a window overnight.

 

Old friendship—sometimes

even when we forget to water it,

persists like mint.

 

Fear, of course, is knapweed-ish,

tap-rooted, invasive. Almost impossible

to eradicate its petals of panic,

petals of dread.

 

Sometimes a name can bloom

on the tongue when the syllables

stem from someone we love.

 

And when we’re very still, the moment itself

seems to bloom, like a peony

revealing layer after tender layer,

charging the air with sweetness.

Now flower. Here flower.

 

The moon, that giant cream perennial,

reminds us nightly how we, too,

are called to grow our light

toward the dark.

 

And uncertainty, it comes to us

in giant bouquets, each bloom a question

that doesn’t want to be answered,

it wants only for us to hold it in our arms

like the gift it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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