The full moon is pouring in from the east across Tampa Bay. It fills the orchid grotto and lights up Rhyncholaelia (Brassavola) glauca. It’s a waxy flower. Looks like many tried and aborted on this same plant but here it is in its magnificent presence. My friend Minh tells me to try smelling it at night so with the moon and all, this is night.
I go into that naturally artificially lit place and I find the flower that Janet had arranged this morning so we might find it when entering the grotto space. Why. Why am I so spatially challenged?!
That flower is a rush. Can I breathe in deeply enough to apprehend the scent? Can I make it enough my air to register and finesse into my brain cortex? That indescribable thing invaded my whole garden and it sits there in the moonlight. Wow this is beyond luxury. This is an organic fuel that takes us to another place.
Boring maybe but as a boy I was taken to the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago. I smelled an orchid in that humid warmth and I never came back. Or. I came back now can I say half a century , fully half a century later in search of the phial of aromatic dance that fluorescence gave me then?
No comments:
Post a Comment