Notes and flowers

Living things don't all require 

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light:

- from "Lamium" by Louise Gluck

This poet's obsession with flowers has single-handedly strewn your mind with blooms. Never mind the uncertainty that lives there, or the sadness that comes for occasional visits. You can count on them not to mind.

The poet has a book filled with flowers. Roses, zinnias, irises, daisies, asters, buttercups, lilies. The pages whisper pinks and lavenders, burst into yellows and oranges, spew out reds and violets, echo blues and incidental blacks. They speak of living, and pain, and sorrow, and death, and hope. So much loveliness lining the hedges, colors brightening the pathways.

But you have zero interest in gardening. Once, you planted lavender Milflores (scientific name: Hydrangea Macrophylla, the internet says) in some grassy front yard from your past. They died, all four of them. Did they know you were going away?

photo from houseonahill.net

Your shopping list has only once included "flowers" (you can picture Mrs. Dalloway shaking her elegant head in disapproval) and the ones you bought were plastic. Tulips, they were, and white. Or were they purple? You wonder.

Are there even purple tulips?

You must remember to buy a vase, next time you go out. Write that down. Now.