Seasons of Glory

This one's for the morning glory, for her daily greeting. For greeting. Sure, all the other flowers of the garden have received me too as I have stepped into each new day of this spring, summer, and now fall. But somehow, it's the morning glory that distinctly greets.

Perhaps it's because it is so fleeting, gone when the cool and sideways light of the morning gives way to the full-fledged day. Perhaps because of its capacity to surprise: with no flower making it beyond a single day, each day's blossoms burst forth in new configurations, from new and unexpected places on the vines. They're "belle de jour" in French: beautiful--beauties for but a day. They come, they go--they don't last: this is the message of both the French and English names. But however ephemeral, and however known for that, it's their abiding, their steady constancy that spoke to me this morning when at the kitchen window--Oh, hello--I caught sight of one out there bobbing gently on the morning breeze.

These belles have kept coming all through our extraordinarily long, sunny, hot, and very dry summer, and they continue to do so even as their vines and leaves have begun to yellow and drop. Daily, they have steadily, unfailingly delivered a fresh and glorious constellation of delight. I am grateful for their company, their constancy, for their crowning each of my days--so many days--with royal color and radiant light.

And for their promise: already they are preparing for the next round. They have madly strewn their seeds upon the ground, to be sure to live on and on. Isn't that Love's way, it strikes me now. However it appears to rise and fall, It's really just stayed steady all along.