Water lily [#33 Bonnie]

Water lily

         for Bonnie

Leaves reach to touch ice, sun streaming through ice to warm them. They are the first children of Spring, sprung from the roots of Winter, wakening from the small death, the months-long sleep.

You weep when you see them. Pause to grasp how these cycles continues, just like your ancestors wept when you were born, another generation of growth to tend to, another flower in their garden.

In your garden crocuses have bloomed and tree buds have swollen. You accept this as right. You've seen this before. How many more cycles to sing out in joy you'll never know.

Leaves in the pond stretch out their palms as if to cover the surface from below. There life teems and hides behind each new swelling bud. You check each day hoping to glimpse what grows below the surface tension.

Trees fill with leaves, buds open petals, shake loose pollen, naught remains but green, life-affirming green. You tend to your garden, the seedlings that sprout. The time has almost come.

Then the day arrives when the first bud breaks the surface, shows a hint of what it'll become. One morning you go out to the pond and there it sits on water, gold-crowned. You call out its name: Chromatella.

© Kåre Enga [168.248] #33 November 22, 2011.