the flowers in my forest

i spent the entire month of april in the dirt, when i say that, i do not mean literally.  i mean, i was along the flower beds and the garden in my forest.  i was working on the series i wanted to include in the solo exhibit scheduled to open on my birthday: "living in colour".

every after my dips and splashes with the brush, i doubt i have ever washed my hands more, and the tiny cracks in my fingers seem permanently darkened, or at least for a day or two, until i start with the next canvass and the stain on my skin gets another hue.  i cannot wash it all away, and i do not want to. these stains remind me of who i am.

the gloaming twilight of life

i am a farmer, and an artist.  not necessarily in that order.  i am married to this land. and with vows one take to the altar, too: for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to eternity and beyond. . .ooops! bwahahaha!

and this commitment with the land i am in, every seed or root is in a give-and-take relationship with me. i plant and water and feed good compost, and the plant grows and gives me fruit or something beautiful to lay my eyes on.  

the soft seduction of lost hopes

this kind of life feels like the original intention for my life.  i was made for this! this is part of the poem the force must have written about me, and now it is coming to pass:  i was always to be a flower lady and a woman with dirt in her skin.  literally and figuratively. bwahahaha!

my truth of being in the tropics has nothing to do with what or how i grow my flowers. i bask in the freedom of my imagination!  afterall, there is no way to control one's mind and heart, is there?  bwahahaha!

such valiant wit

so i grow my poppies to take colours that fill my desires.  i can make them blush to the hottest pink or the deepest red when i want to, or bend and sway them to impossibility.  i can grow them with my trees, where there is not a ray of sun among them, or maybe let them climb with vines to heights no one has ever reached!  i can form tight buds waiting in suspense to unveil.  not once did i doubt that they will bloom into myriad of colours, shapes and sizes. they take form in however i want them to be.  what a sight!  the edges of the fiercest yellow widened until fists of petals opened like offerings for the taking.  take me!  i hear myself saying that out loud.

nothing makes my life more beautiful than it already is.  who else can will a room to overflow with blooms? these flowers in my forest, i can smell their mysterious scents when i wake up and they lead me right where they are planted.  from my studio, i can smell their invigorating scents, fresh, welcoming, inviting, tempting. take me!

the heroic jig

looking at them lined up on the walls of my gallery, i find myself thinking:  these flowers, their beauty is beyond what is real. i hold one against the light, i realize defiantly, they will not wilt, never. they look so right with the trees in my forest, oblivious of storms brewing up somewhere.

i walk back through the gaps between my trees, look for my real flowers and the thought takes my breath away: the blooms come from abiding, from letting the root do what it does.

i love this life that gasps at the frangipanis by the paths beside my forest and the marigolds and cosmos popping their heads out of greens of lined herbs and spices.  let it be that i see beauty in my own life like this. it is mine, but it does not belong to me.  the flowers fade, but the blooms in my heart's forest - these are the things that last forever.

the flowers in my forest 4/n

and life is good!