I’ve never seen the world the bee sees,
a world of iridescence in which petals
change color depending on the angle,
a world in which a field of sunflowers appear
not as a smear of yellow but as individual
blooms. I’ve never seen the bullseye
pattern in the primrose or the pansy,
these human eyes unable to perceive
designs in UV light. Today I look out
at the empty garden where just last week
there were marigolds and calendula,
and I see the absence of flowers, but also,
I see mounds of golds, yellows, oranges, and
I see the boy who used to sit on the edge
of the wooden beds and I see the young
version of me, not yet gray, weeding
the rows, while the boy tells me stories
about school and the things he longs
for beyond what he has. They’re there,
I know, the flowers, the woman,
the boy, though somehow they’re so far
beyond the spectrum not even
the bees can see them.
Posts Tagged ‘flowers’
Eyesight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bees, flowers, garden, grief, mother, sight, vision on October 21, 2025| 9 Comments »
The Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, beauty, change, death, flowers, frost, garden on October 5, 2025| 14 Comments »
Overnight, the frost
took every pink zinnia
every creamy dahlia,
fading their colors to brown.
The nasturtiums have slumped
into dense wilted tangle.
The marigolds hold themselves tall
in a blackened and upright
surrender. For now,
the bright, fresh bouquets
I made yesterday are still
bright and fresh in their vases.
This beauty, we know, won’t stay.
The message is simple:
All that rises passes away.
I see it in these hands
that planted and watered
and weeded and picked—
my skin now wrinkled and thin
as frost-withered petals.
Here: the chance to witness
my own rising and passing.
How natural to age, to die.
The flowers in the vase will wilt.
With every day, so do I.
Such strange gift. First
the joy of putting the self
in service to making something
beautiful. Then, beyond joy,
the grace in learning to let it all go.
Case Study in Insanity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, growing, insanity, persistance, planting, trying, zinnias on August 30, 2025| 4 Comments »
Every year, the zinnias have died,
or else have come so close to dying
I’ve dug out their bare, stunted stems
and frost-browned leaves and planted
trusty petunias. But this year. This year
an enchantment of zinnias. A profusion
of red. Magenta. Yellow. Orange. White.
An astonishment of beauty. A bright
constellation of earthbound joy.
You have heard this, too: insanity
is doing the same thing again expecting
different results. So let me be insane.
For this is the year when again
I bought zinnia starts and hoped
for abundance and was stunned
by flamboyant abundance. It’s making
me wonder what else I might sow
until I no longer have energy to plant:
Kindness. Forgiveness. Trust. Love.
Just because they haven’t always flourished
before, well, look at all these zinnias
outside my door, brilliant and burgeoning,
dozens and dozens, and sure, they will die
come winter, but for now, more flowers arrive
every day. Brilliant. Just look at all those petals.
So Alive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, grief, holy, loss on August 15, 2025| 22 Comments »
Finn, the larkspur are nearly done blooming now,
the tall stalks are scruffy with seed pods where
the dark blue petals used to be.
Is it strange to give you the garden report?
Today is four years since you chose to leave
this world of bindweed and deep red dahlia,
this world of millipedes and green beans
dangling on their vines. The sky is thick
with smoke from a wildfire not so far away.
It was a relief when it began to rain
while I was picking snapdragons and
sunflowers, zinnias and lavender.
I didn’t mind getting drenched
while I filled five vases with flowers,
four vases for our home and one
your father and I took to your grave.
I felt so alive in the middle of the storm,
arranging the blooms in vases just so
while the water dripped from my hair, my nose.
Felt so alive as I smelled the air and spoke
to you and the flowers and sky.
Today my friend Wini told me one way
to keep life sacred is to ask the holy to come.
Please, I said as I stood in the rows.
Please, come. Is it possible the asking itself
is the bridge from the everyday to the holy?
Because I felt it. There in the rain
with my grief-bent heart. There beside
the calendula, aphids and all. Hair plastered
to my head. Tears on my face. Memory
of you writing I love you in the carrot bed.
Me making bouquets for a difficult day.
Even when it hurts, the holy.
The Choosing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, garden, parts of self, self-acceptance, younger self on July 16, 2025| 4 Comments »
Sometimes, when picking flowers
from the garden, I choose not
the showiest blooms, but the snapdragon
with the crooked stem or the pink cosmos
with the slenderest petals or the delphinium
stalk with the fewest blue flowers. Aren’t you lovely,
I say to them as I snip at their stems
and arrange them in a vase, placing them
in the center of my home. In these moments
I am aware of the gangly child I was, crooked-
stemmed and awkward, who longed to be chosen.
I like the way the room feels different
because the flowers are there. I like the way
they change me, too, as if I am saying
to that gawky part of me who felt unlovable,
I choose you. I choose you. I choose you.
What if, instead of grief,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, flowers, grief, pollination, survival on September 3, 2024| 13 Comments »
we call it pollination,
a process through which we realize
the gold of our hearts must spill out
and if we are to survive as a species,
it requires we somehow exchange
this gold with each other—all our hearts
splayed open, all our hearts needing
what the other hearts have.
It’s messy. Vulnerable.
And this is how we go on.
Your grief. My grief.
The quiet buzz of conversation.
This splitting open. This spilling.
This sharing with each other.
What We Sow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bees, flowers, kindness, wild iris on May 31, 2024| 8 Comments »
More than twenty years ago,
I planted several wild iris beside the pond.
Today, I sit beside a generous patch
of fluttering blue flags and watch
a gold-dusted bumblebee clumsily
swerve from bloom to bloom to bloom.
Such joy they bring, these wild iris that rise
and multiply every spring. They remind me of how
kindness, too, is rhizomic, how
years ago you planted in me
something beautiful before you left.
If you came again to my shores,
would you be surprised to see
how your kindness continues to spread?
Two Days Before Mother’s Day I Visit Your Grave
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged artificial flowers, bereaved mother's day, fading, flowers, grave, grief, love on May 11, 2024| 6 Comments »
They are faded, the pink roses
made of fabric someone left
at your grave, and the leaves,
once green, are faint shades
of yellow, and I love them,
these petals that are so much more
than frayed polyester,
transformed as they are
into remembrance. Someone
else misses you, too.
Why does this move me so?
I, too, am fraying. Fading.
Being unmade. I do not mind
the undoing, the new way of being
less interested in perfection.
It’s what happens,
the price for choosing
to show up in all weather
to honor who we love.
I weep for a while beside
the granite with your name in it.
As always, you’re still with me
when I go.
In a Time of Little Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, grief, growth, hope on December 23, 2023| 18 Comments »
In one day, the paperwhites
surge into life—
this heart, too,
has been forced to grow quickly.
Is it any wonder I thrill
to see this leaping up
toward light?
Any wonder I’ve begun to believe
in impossible things?
Aftermath
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, flowers, kindness on August 29, 2023| 10 Comments »
Those seeds you planted
in me with your words—
all through the night they rooted,
grew stems, sprouted leaves.
By morning, I’m in full bloom,
my thoughts a rebellion of petals,
a mutiny of beauty
where once only shadows spread.
All day, your words unfold
in layers of purples and unruly golds.
I like it when people stare—
everywhere I go, I share this:
the aftermath of your kindness.