On Sunday evening, the house was still and I was still.
The flowers on the table, brought in from the garden in the morning, had settled into tableau.
The ornamental sages in front of the porch are taking over the pathways at the moment, so fronds of their deepest purple and palest mauve formed the outliers of the bunch. The lemon verbena has just finished its flowering, but its scent along with the lightly-touched-by-snails shape of their leaves and the desiccated flowers at the end of the stems add a decayed glory to the selection. Also faded, the last of the pink and blue cornflowers that lured bees and bugs to the summer vegetable patch, have joined the vase. Pulled from the ground along with the weeds, the last gasp of the tomatoes, beans, basil, zucchini, parsley, rocket and lettuce. (The bed now put away for the winter, covered in the green of the once-was-a-garden and a liberal layer of horse manure. Hope for the coming again of fresh-picked delight.) There is a cluster of four roses: the colour of the petals bring to mind the spread of a blush on an apricot. Their home bush is co-locating with the olive tree, and they were a bit of a surprise, half hidden from view and begging, most likely, to be left on the bush. Such is life. They’re in the vase now. A quiet struggle between human dominion and nature. The pillage of resources by the colonial powers. They’re next to the penultimate Valencia rose of the present blooming. That last rose still remains with the bush, shooting straight into the sky, tall beyond measure (well, tall beyond my measure) and so perhaps safe, for now, from the secateurs.
Into the quiet of my Sunday steeping, the soft sound of collapse. Valencia down. A four or five second ripple of petals falling, one on top of the other: it was almost as if you could hear each petal glide into the one that left just a moment before it. It was really the most beautiful sound I’ve heard in a long time.
All evening, they remained, curled into each other, a perfect rendition of a rose, but detached from its mooring, and sideways. Cognisable. But requiring some effort and thought to fully comprehend.
A metaphor for where we find ourselves now.
Stardust Becoming 