The Whole Flowering

Yes, the full bloom is pretty all that culmination just short of perfection, that opening, a hasp and harbor for light and warmth a wide-eyed blossoming raised up in a blind glory of transient dominion. Yet the withering is more lovely to me, less beautiful, more graceful than appearance. The grace arrives just beyond the apogee as when a high wave reaches its crest then grace rides ahead of that decline ahead of any loss or sorrow it looks not to what was nor does it seek a tomorrow. That soft hollowing into the brittle arms of bodiless ghosts is a prayer for the ages but not cut flowers in a vase, no they die in a fetid wallow and it is our love of beauty, our grasping at that splendor that curses their death.