Dahlia

 

She holds the whole season in her hands as an offering to me. So grateful for her scarlet gush of uncreated silence, spilling into creation through ephemeral shades of blood-umber bug-enticing sugar. Not once all Summer did she complain about the state of the world. Not once did she sigh, "I am the victim, pity me, I am entitled to your care." With her immaculate courage, her unwavering gaze, so vulnerable in her thirst for simple water, her lust for the sunbeam, her root-kiss deep into loam, she nourished me, as I nourished her. It was understood: "We need each other, the flower, the senses, the astonishment." Winter will surely come and she will center down into her bulb, a meditator, a pilgrim breath coming Om to holy darkness. Yet she will return, a true anam cara. She already contains next April's light. We have no story but Presence. Divine chaos happens now, in this perpetual moment, never in the future or the past. To abide in the frail, the perishing, to make friends with impermanence: this is the secret power of Autumn.