My love of flowers began at an early age. Back in the thirties and forties of another century in New Haven, a small rural town outside Fort Wayne, Indiana, both money and toys were scarce. So one of my earliest recollections of toys was hollyhock blossoms, a flower that grew with great abandon in fertile Hoosier soil. Put a bud and a full blossom together with only a dab of imagination and you had a fairy queen or a tiny doll dressed in a ballgown. Orchids or fuchsias were nowhere to be found in my lexicon in those days. Nor would I have ever thought hollyhocks were associated with ambition.
But when my husband and I began to put together a book of his watercolor paintings and my poems, we came face to face with how much both of us love flowers and how many flowers are intertwined with many of our most treasured memories. Take orchids, for instance. Long ago he did a painting of orchids that I adore. To prepare myself to write a poem about orchids I researched them and collected all kinds of tidbits about them, but when I sat down to write the poem, what came to me was nothing from my research. Rather, what emerged, fresh as a blossom sparkling with morning dew, were memories that insisted on having their own way with the poem.
In the midst of the paintings and poems project, our daughter, Kathy, who is an expert on the latest good books to read, brought me a New York Times bestseller, The Language of Flowers, a novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. It's one of those books that casts its spell quicker than you can say I fell down the rabbit hole! I can tell you with certainty it's a book you don't want to miss. (It is the book chosen by the Cuesta College Book of the Year Committee for the community to read in 2012/2013. For more information, check with Cuesta College.)
When it was time to write a poem about fuchsias the Muse still insisted on exercising her own mind and memories.
When my family moved to California in the late forties and discovered fuchsias, they looked more like costumes for a chorus line than humble love. But what did I know about the mysterious ways of the heart at the ripe old age of thirteen?
Orchids
Planted deep in the process of a poem
I didn’t hear you enter, as I sat at my desk
pen in hand moving across the paper
like a dancer filled with pleasure and passion.
In silence, you set the planter of orchids
beside me, smiling with such delight
I smiled, too. Suddenly it was September ‘97
again and we were in Kauai that first time.
It was orchids and geckos in soft lamplight,
papaya and mangos in brilliant sun.
It was Hanalei Bay and perfect afternoons bobbing
in the waves or snorkeling, not a care anywhere.
It was grace, light, refined beauty and tropical sights.
It was us loving Hawaii, island adventure, ocean
glory, the Napali coast, orchids, and each other.
Always, each other. |
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Fuchsias
Imagination in us loves nothing more
than inspiration waiting just outside the door.
Frilly flowers swaying in a soft summer breeze
summon fairies to tease and tantalize the young.
And decades later, a glimpse of a fuchsia can
whisk the child in us away to a forest glade
where long ago we loved to play, where fairies
and elves lived together in pleasure and peace.
Just the thought of it brought sweet relief from
the broader world’s wars, confusion, poverty,
joblessness, wild weather, soup kitchens, and strife
in that mysterious thing the grown-ups called life.
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