Debutantes

I thought: By the time I get home, they will have bloomed. The poppies will have split apart their bristly clam-shell calyxes and unfurled their extraordinarily vivid orange-red flowers. The peonies next to the porch will have opened their tiny fist-tight buds, sticky with sap and crawling with ants, and let layer upon layer of frilly pink petals spill out, as well as that dense, heady fragrance. And the dense blue shaft-like flowers  of the irises will have pushed up and out of notches in the tall, slender green-mist stems.

In the morning I could glimpse some of  the colors to come peeking out of some of the buds. We're close, I thought, so close; but, getting home: I saw: tomorrow maybe, but not today.

I had thought this post would be about the flowers, something about their shape, color, odor, elegance on full display, but instead it's about waiting.

My washing machine makes me wait; the bus makes me wait; this recent on-shore wind with its white skies makes me wait for clear blue warmth. When I was a freelancer, my contractors made me wait (all the while knowing the check wasn't in the mail). There's payday to wait for.

This waiting is different; it's luxurious.These beauties know what is left to be done, and I submit to their judgment. My desire to feast on the spectacle of their charms must discipline itself to piquant patience: When I'm ready, each says, and not before. Meanwhile, in my imagination, spaces are being prepared to receive what will be revealed when the final thrust occurs, the coverings fall away or are left behind, and, in modest assurance, these flowers present themselves.

It's like my grandson waiting for my hands to fall from my face and hear 'peek-a-boo'. Now? Now?  Or those last two notes of Sibelius' Fifth that always, without fail, catch me flat-footed. Da, da, da, da...now!...no?...da dum, there.

Take your sweet time, my lovelies. You know what I don't about what it is to be you. I submit to your lesson. When the drop hanging from the lip is full, it will fall.