My Indigo by Li-Young Lee

Angel Trumpet flower - Artist Unknown

 

My Indigo

It's late. I've come
to find the flower which blossoms
like a saint dying upside down.
The rose won't do, nor the iris.
I've come to find the moody one, the shy one,
downcast, grave, and isolated.
Now, blackness gathers in the grass,
and I am on my hands and knees.
What is its name?

Little sister, my indigo,
my secret, vaginal and sweet,
you unfurl yourself shamelessly
toward the ground. You burn. You live
a while in two worlds
at once.
     

Li-Young Lee

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I planted a Sacred Datura Moonflower last year from a tiny seed.  It grew into a large bush with woody branches and fragrant white bell-like flowers that hung under the leaves, upside down.  I could not believe I had grown this amazing being.  This year I found two more flowers of this variety...one is pale pink and the other is pale yellow.  I planted the seeds.  The plants are now over five feet tall with leaves larger than my hands.  One of them has what looks like string beans hanging under the leaves.  I await the first opening of the first flowers each night.  Did I not tell you they only bloom at night?  They are night creatures, like the moon...shy and unassuming.  How is it that these amazing creatures appear from such tiny seeds?  It is a mystery.  I do not want to know the whys of it or the hows.  I watch the night butterflies (moths) drink from my flowers.   They know the mystery but are not talking.

 

 

xoxo,

Marion

 

 

"Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you." ~Edward Payson Rod