The flowers are pink, riotously shaded from almost white in the deep center where tall stamen burst out, to a slice of deep carmine at the tip. The flower is a circled row of aspen shaped petals. With them in the vase are white lillies scented with a bit of Heaven. They stand gloriously eloquent for a week, then the white takes on a gray and the scent and petals fade.
The pinks ignore their jar-mates and keep their heads up for another few days, then one by one, like fall leaves, they litter the table.
I pick up one that is still soft and blushing, an icon for a short poem on life or love, perhaps life and love if you are very lucky. In that tiny petal the details of treasured moments are painted. Our world passes through a series of beautiful moments in time that will never stay, circling for a few days to form a perfect flower, then fall to be swept up. A metaphor for life.
Every day, time absorbs us, demands our attention. Like the old God,Cronos, it devours everything it creates. Yet, it creates.
In return for allowing him to love her,the Greek god, Apollo promised the Sibyl of Cumea anything she wished. She asked that Apollo love her for as many years as the number of the grains of sand she held. She forgot to ask for youth and as she aged, Apollo ceased to love her and forgot her. She faded away and only her voice remained. In my collection of poetry on Greek mythology, “The Gift of Lovely Song” she asks her fellow oracles, “Is the hour of love enough?”
In an old book, my grandmother had pressed a flower. I am a great-grandmother now and the flower has fallen apart but what piece of the world was in that flower? A kiss? Love itself? She married three times but loved only once. The flower was briefly held, or was it? Was this bit in the book, still that hour of love? I hope so.
He was my grandfather whom I never knew but am looking forward to seeing what that icon held when I get to Heaven. At least, I hope to get to Heaven.
Perhaps it will depend upon whether or not, like Hansel and Gretals’ bread crumbs, I can leave a trail of flowers in this world.
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Bird of Time 