The Blossoming

The Blossoming

Let me tell you what happened:

I got stuck
in the blossoming.

You see, I wanted only and always to be light:
breeze-bobbing and delightful.

I wanted to offer up my heart;
throw open the soft chamber of the petals, always laughing;
to balance on my soft stem like a question,
reaching
ever up.

Then came one of those
everyday winters.

When it was time to bow down –
to brown and curl –
I would not go.

What was down there
but the faceless nets of the fungus?
The jaws of the grubs?
The plundering ants?

And who, I wondered, ever stops
to admire a brown and rent leaf
as it melts into the ground?

I tell you –
now, I do.

I will tell you also:
there is no colder winter than one spent
yearning for flowers.

I lost more than one season
in argument against the patient,
waiting rootedness –

the hiding below ground,
talking with death and bacteria.

And dreaming.
And biding. And later I would miss even bright days in scorning the leaves,
who live not to sing
but only to gather
and gather.

But what do you know
of flowers that never fade?

I imagine they are not as innocent
or soft
as they seem.


I had heard it said but did not yet believe
that the soil is the flowers
and the roots are the flowers
and the ice is the flowers
and the fungus is the flowers
and the stems, and the leaves, and the sun, and even
the death.

Now
I wonder if the world
is one,
long
blossoming.


-Claire Dacey (Soul Flares reader)