Blooms

Sitting here with a vase full of lilies. Orange ones, a few cut tall. When I brought them home there were three blooms open. Several others remained tightly shut like the part of a screw driver that bites the bit from three sides.

Now, seven flowers have spread out wide, pistils loaded with rusty pollen. One has gone as far as shedding all its petals, foregoing wilt, nature giving up under a spiraling force of gravity. What once flourished in glory and fullness is now a stalk of a stamen without protection. Its brothers and sisters still lean and reach for the light. In this inside air, there's not a chance that the pollen will ever find its target. Their attitude, nonetheless, is inate, if futile.

The first blooms suffer the effortless throws of entropy. Late blooms stand firm, as if inviting the world to embrace, petals outstretched like estranged friends approaching a happy reunion. But the artificial scenario is inescapable. The end will be in decay, maybe with a pungent smell, maybe not. Natural beauty, faint hints of honey and lightness and suppleness, becomes wrinkled, a withered pile of shriveled arms and hands. Still honor and memory balance in the air, as though the thought of the bloom alone were enough to yield a smile.