November 11th 2022

The Last Bloom

This week I spotted chicory blooming and it made me wonder if this would be the last bloom I would see until spring. If the year’s first flower saves the world, is this the one that sustains it? Is this the flower that will bring me through winter? Is this the one I’ll hold in my mind as the days darken? Are these the petals that will give me hope of a spring promised, but yet to come? Maybe I ought to look at every blossom with a moment’s reverence, as if it might be the very last. Maybe I should have been saving them up in my mind all year long, and basking in their light. Where else have things become routine which we should have been appreciating? Where should we pause in life? (Enough pauses in your day or week and you begin to create rhythms of gratitude. Wouldn’t that be a lovely thing?) I know that each season is beautiful in its own right, but winter is hard, and I find myself scrambling for an anchor as the sunlight wanes. But I trust that the flowers will find me, even laden with snow, and be all the more lovely for it.