Flowers and Fire
In a perfect world I would be running through fields; following the butterflies and the bees, discovering flowers that no one sees. I would be noting down their uniqueness and figuring out their patterns…Oh the joy, to be able to build and share this beautiful puzzle.
I will be climbing up boulders and allow streaming waters to flow through my fingers. I will only be stopping to gently rub leaves between my fingers to feel their softness, or roughness or my own painful regret when I need to pick little tiny prickles out of my skin. I will be connecting the dots and asking questions like “where have I felt this surface before?”; I will lift my fingers to my nose to inhale even more information that this little plant is willing to share with me. I will be marveling at the pretty flowers and fondly remembering a similar one that I might have seen before.
In this moment, it will just be me and this flower and nothing else will matter. Just me, this flower and everything that it is trying to tell me. I wish I could listen to only this flower…but all I can hear is crackling and all I can smell is smoke, from the fire that is burning the world around me.
The flower is trying to tell me about a new fire, where it will start, what it will do; the ashes are trying to tell me about the current fire, where it is, what it is doing. I stand, overwhelmed by the fire that I can see coming; overwhelmed by the fire that I can still see burning. How do I choose which fire to dedicate myself to help putting out? Is there even a choice to make? How can watching the world burn, while trying to prevent a new fire, even be a choice?
There are only so few of us available to put out the fire that is currently being fueled. The longer we wait, the higher it will one day burn. But if we ever allow the fire coming, to meet the fire burning…the whole world will be consumed, and neither the flowers nor the ashes will be able to speak.
