Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘flower’

A Scrap in Time

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2025| 5 Comments »


 
 
Something about the relentless beauty
of the dahlias this year makes me forget
lists and calls and news and aches as
I stand beside them in a splendor stupor,
watching them bloom in real time, not
wanting to miss a moment of the long stems
rising, the red color deepening then fading
from the petals as they age. I imagine a time lapse
begins, and the world’s winter white, then greening
again, and now a hundred years pass,
now five hundred, a thousand, and the garden
bed is gone and the fence is gone and
the trees and the ditch and the home
are gone, and there’s no way to know
this was once a place where dahlias grew.
Is it any wonder, then, I call to you, ask you
to come stand here with me to watch
the dahlias open themselves to the sun,
each petal a hymn to the present,
a history soon to be forgotten, a shimmer in time
we might put in a vase and marvel as
all around it the whole world spins.

Read Full Post »

In a Time of Many Wildfires

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 11, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Geranium leaves
covered in fine white ash—
how many ghosts of tall pine trees
visit today in my garden—
and still, with such delicacy
the new flowers open.

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

Let the World Have Its Way With You

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 9, 2025| 12 Comments »


 
 
Today it’s the daisy that teaches me
about opening. How lovely it was last week.
I praised its yellow, sun-gold petals
reaching out as they were from the bright center.
After last night’s fierce rain, the flower has been trashed,
stripped of its petals. Every. One. Bent and bruised,
they lie splayed in the dirt. And the daisy
goes on with its growing. New leaves.
New roots. New buds. Nourished
by the rain that tore the flower apart.
How often have I, too, lost all my petals, only to learn
that was not the end of the story of opening?
This world is a world of both beauty and loss.
Did I ever really believe one opening
would last me forever? It’s always a lifetime
of learning. Today it’s so clear that when
I can bring presence to loss or resistance,
this act makes pain itself luminous,
is how the heart grows roots, and buds and leaves.
Always it returns to this—offering the broken world
my wonder. In return, oh, the opening.

Read Full Post »

Annual

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 31, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
I know they will die,
the dahlias, the zinnias,
the petunias, the geraniums,
will die come autumn,
and still I buy them, still
plant them and sing to them
as I do. Looking up
from the garden beds, trowel
in hand, I see it in everything—
the spruce, the ants, the swallows,
this hand—all that lives will die.
And staring at the basil, pungent
and green and ephemeral, I feel
so darn lucky to unfold
for whatever time I  am given.
To bloom while I can. To be marigold.
Calendula. Mother. Begonia. Gratefulness
floods me like low summer sun.
I turn my face toward that light.

Read Full Post »

Looking at the Bouquet on My Counter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 19, 2024| 4 Comments »

 
 
Like tiny, earthbound fireworks
that flourish in my garden,
the flowers of wild bergamot
flare purple, their slender petals
curl back, and I am reminded
how small it can be, our chance
to blaze, to be beautiful, to spread
our sweet perfume, and still make—
at least in one life—a real difference.

Read Full Post »

Yellow Coneflower

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 30, 2024| 6 Comments »


If ever I needed
a demonstration
on how to lead
with the heart,
it’s you, coneflower,
that teaches me
how to shine forth
from the center,
how to grow
from the muck.
I am ready to live
the way you do,
wild and abundant,
needing dark and
cold to germinate, but
living to gather light.

Read Full Post »

When Shown What Is Possible

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 24, 2024| 10 Comments »


 
How do they do it,
the marsh marigolds
rising out of the muck,
their bright white petals
and lemon yellow centers
seemingly unmarred
by dark swampy ground?
They grow, beautiful,
not despite the muck, but
because. Because slop.
Mire. Mess. Thick mess.
Squishy boot-sucking mess.
It’s what they were made to do.
Dear heart, how about you?

Read Full Post »

Another Reason to Marvel

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 6, 2023| 6 Comments »

The average color of the universe
is not blue, as they thought, but beige—
or so they say after studying
two hundred thousand galaxies—
a fact that makes me stand longer today
beside this tulip as it shamelessly splays
its statistically unlikely yellow and red,
a living manual for possibility—
in all of deep space,
the chance to show up in this garden.

Read Full Post »

Evidence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 9, 2023| 15 Comments »

After almost two years
of growing only leaves,
the orchid that sat
on the back windowsill,
the one I have dutifully
watered and whispered to,
the one I had finally
resolved to throw away,
sent up a single spiraling stem,
shiny and darksome green,
and I who have needed
years to hide, to heal,
felt such joy rise in me
at the site of tight buds,
the kind of irrational joy
one feels when something
thought dead is found alive,
not only alive, but on the edge
of exploding into beauty,
and now it doesn’t seem
so foolish after all, does it,
this insistent bent toward hope.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »