Calendar of flowers

Magnolia grandiflora

Oldest and wisest of flowers, you have watched me throughout my life.

When wisteria and azalea have fallen, when dogwood's blossoms have dropped to the forest floor, before crepe myrtle tosses its petal confetti across the pavement, you spread your palm-sized petals open to the sky and wind.

Your scent is sharp, not sweet - bracing, it wakes memory in me.

Your blossoms are broad, faces waving from tree branch, white and bright in the darkest day, holding light and water in equal measure with equal ease.

In your bloom-heart you carry the evidence of your ancientness, the taut cone that betrays, along with the evergreeenness of your leaves, your ancestry.

And in the fall, those cones will drop, red-berried and spice-smelling, to the ground, to mark the end of summer as your white petals and tart scent mark its beginning.

How could I ever live where your roots do not reach? What sky could I live under that your platter-leaves do not shade?

Wisteria, magnolia, sunflower - mark for me the passage of the light, until fall equinox delivers me again to the blessed darkness. So mote it be.

Calendar of flowers

Magnolia grandiflora

Oldest and wisest of flowers, you have watched me throughout my life.

When wisteria and azalea have fallen, when dogwood's blossoms have dropped to the forest floor, before crepe myrtle tosses its petal confetti across the pavement, you spread your palm-sized petals open to the sky and wind.

Your scent is sharp, not sweet - bracing, it wakes memory in me.

Your blossoms are broad, faces waving from tree branch, white and bright in the darkest day, holding light and water in equal measure with equal ease.

In your bloom-heart you carry the evidence of your ancientness, the taut cone that betrays, along with the evergreeenness of your leaves, your ancestry.

And in the fall, those cones will drop, red-berried and spice-smelling, to the ground, to mark the end of summer as your white petals and tart scent mark its beginning.

How could I ever live where your roots do not reach? What sky could I live under that your platter-leaves do not shade?

Wisteria, magnolia, sunflower - mark for me the passage of the light, until fall equinox delivers me again to the blessed darkness. So mote it be.