Some people see a few pots placed prettily around my balcony. I see my garden. What IS a garden? "A piece of ground on which flowers, etc., are cultivated: a pleasant spot: a fertile region". My pots qualify. And within them is a world of nature, and so much to wonder at in a flower. Even in the slow twirl of a withering leaf, where an artist could find hue upon hue for her palette. In the textures of a dry twig versus a young shoot. In the scent not only of a flower, but of a leaf. I learn how to touch, how to smell, how to listen, how to see.
My white gardenias,
dressed for their first communion,
pirouette open.
Why has it taken me forty-one years to look beyond the scent and colour of a gardenia, and discover the divine symmetry that takes a bud into full bloom with one long slow perfect pirouette? They twirl to unfurl their glory, and I think of little Catholic girls showing off their new frilly white new dresses to one another, twirling in a cathedral courtyard, giggly and excited as they wait for their confirmation.
How could I have missed such a magical event? And paid so much more attention to bigger, noisier trivialities? I never noticed until now. But now I notice.
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