Nature/flowers/life
And She Dies to Bloom and Blooms to Die
Reciprocal Nature Prompt Flowers
A Jar of Tulip:
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
— Tulips, Sylvia Plath
S he opened her eyes. Her lashes like petals spread wide to inhale the cold air. She smiled at the beauty around her — the fallen leaves on earth and the twinkling stars above. How can she not love her world?
Her birth was a chance upon the dust, seeking freedom from beneath a tombstone, where a body went to heave her last. But the energy of life migrates below, to grow roots and nourish the stem to birth a bloom.
The cycle of life is volatile on living, passing from human to humous, from gigantic to petite, from form to flower.
She does not use words to announce her arrival, she just blooms.
And you travel away from your pain and sorrow and watch from a distance, flying around meteors and milky ways, and realise all this while, for days on this planet you were also blooming.
Flowers signify life. They send notifications of beauty. Present with us from birth to death they are companions of a solitary mind, life events, and nature’s ways of reminding us for everything that jars our mind, there is a jar of tulip!
Swing of Daffodils:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
— Daffodils, William Wordsworth
In the swing of her mood, she will slip into her sylvan scape, where the whole world is a garden of fragrance and hues. Be the exotic, the mundane, or left-in-the-corner wildflowers, they fill her senses like the mountain air.
She talks to them and touches to smile, her imagination flying high with the butterfly, that cavorts around the blooms, attracted by its smell and pollen.
Her world around the blooms is a hard bound text on life.
How a little care, nutrition, and a lot of sunshine, help the seeds to travel beyond the soil fence and hold their beauty in flowers, just the way positivity nourishes a fallen soul.
How the blooms have their own clock and appear when it is time. Nothing in nature is rushed yet accomplished with such finesse.
The flowers enjoyed by day create a mind garden that blooms often in the dark of night, creating a sense of peace and relief.
Child of the wild:
Your ways familiar,
Reminds me of someone I know —
I walk into my room,
With a cluster of you in tow,
Shadows juxtapose, if walls could speak,
In unison we sail, child-o-wild —
Yes, You and me!
— Child-o-wild, by Author
They are red, pink, violet, yellow, or white. Their nonchalant nodding to air, easy existence, a never-say-never attitude steal hearts.
A crack in a pot, a peeled plaster from a wall, an abandoned corner of a garden, their easy ways of showing up in the world of neglect is awe-inspiring.
These children- the of-the-wild take root wherever they are, grow strong through the wind, rain, pain, sunshine, blue skies, and starless nights and dance even when it seems there is nothing worth dancing — for they bloom with or without you.
Wilds grow in uncultivated soil, in those hard, rugged places where no one expects them to flourish. They are resilient in ways a garden bloom could never be. People are the same, but the most exquisite souls are those who survive where others cannot.
They root themselves, along with their companions, wherever they are to thrive.
In the world of roses, lilies, and orchids, rising above the curated and artificial, they lend the right quirk to create a podium of their own, just like how a bunch of pansies casually stacked in a vase lights up a room.
Her Flowers :
“She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims…” ― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
For how long she doesn’t remember, that she was compared to flowers every time she wore one in her hair.
She wore the violet petals that broke rocks, the red Gerbera which rocked hearts, held flower-bouquets veiling the brickbats, carried white wreaths on her cold body sacrificed, flew with the passing wind like dandelion florets only to be lost to the dust,
may be to bloom again as life — still wanting to be a beautiful flower and invaded by the bees and butterflies.
You cannot leave before rehashing what Hans Christian Andersen once said,” Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”
The photographs and the paintings are done by and copyright of Monoreena Acharjee Majumdar
Mia Verita did an exotic study on flowers which beautifully spoke to me. Her photographs are always a nice accompaniment to her words. Read her Here.
Cristina Cattai weaves a personal tale sensitively around this flower story, which we all can relate to. You can read her in Those-chrysanthemums-my-mother-wouldn't-love.
Thank you Dr. Preeti Singh for such drool-worthy Reciprocal Nature Prompt , it is always a pleasure to weave around them.
Thank you Yana Bostongirl Sahil Patel for all the support in creating an atmosphere of bonhomie.
Thank you to everyone paying a visit to encourage and engage. You are much appreciated!
