I can smell it now, office door open to the burgeoning
springtime. I am delirious with giddy excitement. I am in
love! I am taken by the arm … my lips purse into the shape of a kiss … I feel I
could hug forever the fragrance that comes in whiffs and puffs and big knock-me-down-flat
gusts of aphrodisiac scent. My knees are weak and my hands tremble a bit. I tie
my fingers fast to each other lest I tangle them around a stem in a too-tight
embrace and knock the life out of the fiery yellow, sacred white, and shocking
fuchsia petals that somehow produce and yet cannot contain their natural
perfume.
I am not stooping into a flower head or even near the gaily-blooming
guys. I am yards away, inside, but feeling their hold on me as the breeze
enters through the screen door. It’s better than incense: it doesn’t burn out
quickly or create ash in its exhaustion. For these dear and precious unexpected
moments, I am bowled over! It is nothing short of love for the smells that are
carried in here…and that I swim through when I move across the threshold into
the outside place surrounding my four walls.
It’s true: I write the word “love” in nearly every scrap
or whole piece of writing I manage. It’s true: I fall in love with the natural
world over and over, and over again. Smitten. Heart-wrenching,
butterflies-in-gut, perfect infatuation deepened into sustaining love. Over and
over, and over again.
