Agapanthas

The agapantha blooms are wilting again, another June here on the Central Californian shores

Up towards towards the crusts of the cerros and lomas tucked in behind the water

Rivers creep through the landscape dwindling down to inevitability and into the vast Pacific

Gravity pulls us all down to the earth eventually, for even ashes will fall after they've risen.

The water is no different: a wave crests because it will fall, a tide rises to retreat and the waterfall crushes the rocks below.

Even the mountains can only fight gravity for so long, as the water will eventually wrinkle the face like tears tugging on an old man's skin patience will eventually takes it toll

Time walks slowly, depending on perspectives, and watching the hills move at an incalculably slow rate I realize how rushed we must seem

To the flies that buzz or the scurrying mouse, time must move like lightning - and to the gods and planets we must look foolish and hurried.

This behavior seems normal and to a casual observer, at the least liche.  Shameless moments are the spine of routine and the spleen of social function;

When people take for granted their actions rather than rehearsing the excuses for their behavior.

So we do this over and over again, bound by gravity, rising and falling to the turning suns

When the light cascades through our windows the fight begins, a wrestling stance positioned against the very nature of science

Trying to move ourselves in the light against the pulling Sun and Moon, as if this were the hyperbole of ancient tales.

No, this is now, a rising fight against the morning sun to steal its energy and force this planet to meet my needs 

I want this to be only my reservoir of energy flowing into and out of the fractured landscape cut by the labor of my fathers and mothers before me

A ware waged against and amongst the selfish interests of my fellow man - lest I forget how typical my plight here is.

When the day is done, we cease the fight, if only because we are flawed and cannot fight the Earth forever.

We lay into the gravitational pull and rest as the Sun tugs on the warrior spirit of our fellow space travelers.

There she is in the morning, the wilted Agapantha.  Those purple leaves that stood so tall, tilt towards the earth

Parallel to the axis and askew to those leaves, dangling just above the earth and feeding from the Sun, the stalk of the agapantha wilts.

In the blink of an eye the stalk shoots to the sky, awake and ready to fight against the cosmic bodies pulling us round in cirlces

The purple petals, the bulbous cocoons, that erupt in sleek geographic flowers for a saloon of other planters:

Birds, bees and the squirrels that terrorize the trees above my roof, they move about in an orbit of these earthly flowers

Then, almost selfishly, they cease to function.  The stalks no longer spring above the the ground, but they fall almost ashamedly back to their genesis, as if this were not normal

But every year as the Sun stretches its light further and further out the agapantha stalk lifts it head from its emerald pillows and goes to work

Then, like an old broken horse, the stalk limps further and further closer to its master, cracked and bent the petals long since blown away, together they weather the final storms of time,

Where eventually the spine and rigor breaks and the cells have no function but to fade.

And the gardener finally comes to sweep the debris and chase the insects and remove those useless stalks so they may be composted for next spring's soil.