YOU ARE ORCHID

More than beguiling
are your orchids,
as they slothfully awaken
from the loving silence
of a kindly California winter
to greet me
in the half-light
of a snappy
February morning.

Morning and our garden
have merged
to come of age;
the cycle of living
naturally transparent
in this corner
that was once home
to your footprints.

Time stands still
at the moment of separation
between night and dawn.
Your orchids,
which occupy the same space
as they did one year past
when they bloomed
only for you,
now blossom
in a different dimension,
somewhere beyond myself
and the shifting tendrils
of illusion.

I water them once a week
and feed them once a month,
as you did
in the graceful shadows
of distant yesterdays.
I have conversations with them,
much like I do with Woodrow,
our whiskered counterpart,
and they answer me
with their efflorescense
of beauty
that have more meaning
than lost poems.

You are orchid.
While you sleep
orchids bloom.
You are one
with the morning;
every garden
I have ever known.

Yesterday's spikes
were suspended
in quiet anticipation.

Today's buds
are in a perpetual state
of boundless freedom,
open to the beauty
that is in all of us,
and the ramdomness
of destiny.

© JOHN PISCATELLA