The efficacy of flowers
is an assurance and a lesson
that living things have purpose
and meaning by mere existence.
How much mastery a seed or bulb
contains before it settles deep
into snug pockets of soil.
It’s story is complete if secret,
the conclusion well foregone.

Does the flower ever know its fate?
Does it see its future coming,
how it will inch its way through
sprawling, humid earth with
one goal only–leaf, stem, bud
to light, water from sky,
tendril roots to deeper, then
a grand unfurling amid
breezes that will carry
its scent and seeds afar?

It comes into itself with ease, on
unhurried schedule, with grace that
adorns its fullness like afterthought.
Its unfolding is a soft dazzle,
a rapture of complexity–
such execution of design,
matchless, refined, a bit shy yet
a beacon for insect lives and me.

Its victory of beauty is found
with nose, eyes and fingertips,
carefully despite its strength,
and ingenuity–did it not push
its way up through rock, worms,
creepers and gnawers, gnarly roots,
more dirt to emerge intact?

But I wonder if it knows its splendor
is short lived, its life tarrying
briefly and then an exit,
its farewell often missed by others.
And even then noted only as
a humble passing, its elegance
finally fading as it returns
to welcoming, familiar earth.

Flower, I will keep such knowledge close:
that completion lives within me, and
life can bloom divine despite
complications or twists of ego
(no flower carries our burdens)
that scheme to make beingness harder.
I, too, have all required to survive,
arrive at an apex as intended.
And yet before I know it will let go
of verve, of tenderest or brutal things,
the salve of love; let my living

transform through ending as all must,
and move on then, and so be done.