Ode to the Peony

Each year, my complex friends return to me

Only to leave too quickly

It takes a whole year to recover.

Then they rise again,

Cruel and reckless beauties they are

Emerging from the dark

Their cautious, green fingers gently probe the world

Before they explode in unabashed color

With the arrogance of youth

Faces to the sun

They are maidens to entice

In nimble celebration

Lush with future and possibility

Spreading beauty, offering love

But when the weight of all that strutting finally grows heavy

And what was once a festival of color is offered up to a different kind of sumptuous

They quietly look back–

Below, above

To show us what we must not hold:

Attachment, vanity

As the crone emerges

With her wisdom in a wild return to nature

The acceptance of letting go,

And of things as they are:

Their scent,

Once roses-sweet,

Has become more subtle and intricate

As a different kind of fertility blooms

With the nuance in the tightening and browning of buds,

Before that exquisite fall to earth again

As the cool, soft petals are released

No longer seeking approval

And what is unneeded falls away

Making room for the essential,

For completion

And others also to bloom