Every fall comes a terrible tragedy, all around us. |
Butterfly Down In the other vein, there is a saying that time is too vain, especially with our eye on the weather vane. But I don’t subscribe to that way of thinking, nor do I subscribe to the news about death and flowers. Simple windy days blowing leaves across the road, that’s all I can see or say, that’s all I will notice, at least now. For you see, a wonderful zinnia has been teaching terrible lessons that beg me to chirp freely through the cold night, sun going down sooner and coming up later, zinnias crying but they’re not dead, and they keep shining bravely out, beckoning in the sun of the afternoon where my friend the Monarch sits sipping softly on the stamen, wondering how much longer its sweet nectar will be there, wondering why the air has that pinch, and hardly remembering all those days of waiting in the wiry cocoon. All those days of patience, all those days of delirious hope, gone now with the dandelions, gone with the hot dusty mornings, gone with the knowledge that flying was a gift from the Sunflower, gone with the little love note that the honeybee left for me, gone with the song of the cicada; yet my chirps are still here between my legs, as is the zinnia. But down there in the dead leaves, in the soft dry leaves, down there with just one little flutter; my Queen; down. |