Old Lady 'Alchymists'

I am enchanted by most flowers but especially so by "Alchymist" in the rosebed.

As if crooking old fingers to indicate they have secrets to tell with raspy low voices, they draw me to them.

Approaching, I see the characters of old ladies within the cabbagey blossoms - gossiping heads bent together, crinkling their mouldy eyes at me. Others are isolated, in high colour and gaping.

Peering into these faces, I find the softest wrinkles in skin tones of pink and peach and tan, and not at all frightening.
Instead, the 'crone' myth lives here - not only are they old, they are wise.

Gently fostering tender new buds, teaching and imparting wisdom to them, the crones know to do so expeditiously; they will soon wilt, then dry, then fall back to earth. Ashes to ashes and all that.

At first the tender new buds are lovely and naive and unaware of the precious lode of lore within them.

They blossom and open wide and, unbelievably, become even more beautiful in their maturity. Perhaps that's when they know... instinctually sensing to divulge to their new buds before the inevitable.

Obviously for me, this parallels the female human condition.
It also brings me to a poem - a favourite of mine by, of all people, Tennessee Williams from his play, "Night of the Iguana".
Thank you for indulging me.
Sandra




"How calmly does the orange branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, with a prayer
With no betrayal of despair.

Sometime while night obscures the tree
The zenith of its life will be gone - past forever
And from thence, a second history will commence.

A chronicle no longer gold
A bargaining with mist and mould
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth and then
An intercourse not well-designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The earth's obscene, corrupting love.

And still the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair.

Oh, courage, could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell?
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?"