Mystery Plant
“The first photo arrived in June before it flowered, and it looked like a nondescript, blobby leaf akin to butter crunch lettuce. “I have no idea what that is,” I messaged her. But, as it turns out, I was the one who’d planted it. “I just need to know whether or not it’s a weed,” she persisted. “No clue,” I insisted, while in some vague, square space in the recesses of my mind, I could feel, no almost recollect it, knowing I had cataloged it, but yet, it remained, elusive. “You did give me some seedlings to plant, from a neighbor,” I offered. “No, it doesn’t look like Nicotiana, I don’t think,” she replied. A couple weeks later she hit me up again. The life of a flower gardener can be relentless, when things are in bloom. “I really need to know what that plant is”, she reiterated. “It’s ... you have to come see it,” she emphasized, with a passion few but plant fanatics could recognize, as a basic food group. “Okay. I’m coming,” I said or thought, or conveyed to the librarian of all that is truly urgent, with an inaudible whisper of assent. And I did go. We stood side by side, and looked at the thing itself, for a few precious moments. “Hmm,” I may have intoned, or perhaps “Ahh,”, infused with the lofty sagacity of one who has just completed brain surgery for the 100th time. But “Will you look at that,” was about all I really had. Excusing myself to run to the truck for my phone camera, I returned, and captured the image. Then left the plant, and my friend, and went home, to witness the grand reveal in privacy, a la Uncle Google. I guess we are all just fools, on a fool’s errand. A noble, unfathomable, fool’s errand. We had so many flowers, always, and so little time. The colors that opened to us, were on a collision course, with every other shade of happiness. It would be impossible to count the number of tools lost, the hours spent, the worms, oh the worms, either split in half, or upset. I was never looking for a fight, only a reprieve from dull rigor of what was expected, that I didn’t have in me. I had to dig, and climb, and become less and less presentable, and then lay under bushes, until no one came. So that in the end, the most precious surprises might creep up on me, intersecting in my mind like words in a crossword puzzle, all coming together. Protecting my heart, with their invisible languages. Telling me to shush, and not talk, no I would never have to justify myself again. Just as “Hopi Tobacco”, need not utter into the day, anything ever, not that it ever did, but peace.”