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Sue A.

Cry Me a Crocus

Updated: Dec 30, 2022

Every time I open a door, a window, I remember. Every single thing looks the same. Same sky. Same grass (growing greener by the day). Every bud on a tree branch reminds me that life continues. It will not be denied.

I noticed You several weeks ago poking from the ground, almost taunting me with Your ability to arrive right on time.

At a time that feels at once without end and constricted by my fear of checking the clock, the calendar, to confirm that, yes, life is going on. Whether I’m on board or not. Whether I like it or not. Whether it suits me in its unfamiliar fashion. Familiar is the way my body fashions it’s warmer-season clothing. Unlike you, year after year, in Size Perfect Petal Pusher Petite, none of it ever fits. And I act surprised every year by the results of my 

winter hibernation inaction and

inattention to what I have consumed so freely, with almost the same pompousness I’m sensing in you.

No, that was wrong.

Look at me, projecting my own feelings,

of shame…

...on a plant. You have every right to bloom proud! It’s me that repeated a mantra: "Spring is far, far away.

It will never arrive

on time anyway."

And yet it does, it did, it has.

Change has come. 

Unlike me though,

You reveal Yourself to be

just as I remember You:

a perennial

small in stature,

fierce in function.

Brilliant in purple and yellow.

Oh wait, this is poetry –

Brilliant in violaceous glory and a Xanthos glow.

Comfortable in your corolla.

Unlike me, you did not overeat the winter menu of frozen nitrate nuggets and ammonium ampules. Unlike me, You always left something in the soil for the other plants. Without words (or complaint), You earthen bulbs worked together with a symbiosis not always found in human interactions. It's like your instinctive generosity covers you in kindness.  You wear masks of magnanimity without self-righteous protest.

And yet we’re the first to articulate

what we feel is

not working.

What we feel we’ve

lost.

What we feel is

out of balance.

What we feel

is an inconvenience - no - 

a threat to our very existence!

What we feel is,

dare I say, downright uncivilized.

All while you carried on Your inert Winter Solstice existence in blissful Buddhist silence. Monks to my Monster Self.

You’re blooming now.

without declaring 

you have a right to. 

Not showy so much as

showing me a way to

live more colorfully

and with more hope and patience.

You didn’t even cry the other day

when fertilizer was spread

on grass adjacent to Your home.

I’ll bet it burned in some way;

but, of course, You’d never say.

Still, I want to be angry at You

because nothing seems to

have changed for You.

Nothing seems to have hurt You,

deprived You,

confused You,

terrified You,

infected You.

“Stupid, spoiled crocus,” I say.

As if I don’t have the natural instinct to

grow,

and adapt,

and thrive.

No matter what.

As if I don’t have five working senses to:

See (the miracle of this exact moment),

Smell (the Earth waking up all around me),

Feel (the love that is so abundant),

Taste (the over-abundance of food I'm blessed with),

Hear (the notes between the pages of life).

As if I don’t have the sense to see that life -  when one has it -  is precious beyond poetry. What do I know about what You know? For all I know You’re aware on some cellular level

that the Earth has changed.

What threatens my existence now, someday, may obliterate yours.

When I see a breeze

flutter Your petals,

perhaps it’s really like

You have purple praying hands

offering up all that You have

that’s within Your power

to remind me that

Life is indeed

livable.

And look at You,

almost quarantined Yourself

to live out Your life

rooted to the same spot.

And I don’t hear You crying about it.

Oh, crocus,

cry me a river

to wash away my

sense of selfish loss

of something I’ve never fully owned anyway.

Flood me with humility.

Make me as small as a new spring bud;

to see potential versus proscription.

If You’ve taught me anything:

Life and death and change and illness and health and sadness and joy always arrive on time, in exactly the way God (You) designed.

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