SO, this morning I sat down after two mini college fairs and let myself write.
Without pretense or goal.
And, for the first time in a very long time, I wrote a little.
Here for your mid-Thursday morning's amusement, I present to you, "The Tale of Two Flowers".
Once upon a time, there was a flower.
The flower was neither particularly beautiful nor
particularly ugly, just enough of both that it was able to maintain its presence in the
garden without being pulled for either reason.
Then, one day, a boot. The boot meant no harm, but harm it
caused, and the flower’s stem went snap!
The gardener, working away at his weeding, didn’t
notice the flower for some time, but when he did, he was very sad, for he
remembered the day he had planted that flower, just as he remembered planting
each one of his flowers.
The black tulips he had thought were purple upon purchase of
the bulbs.
The rhododendron which had begun to dominate the back
corner.
The daffodils.
He looked at the flower, wondering if a stint would sustain
its life.
Such a break could not be amended, though.
Then, the gardener had a thought, and he cut the bloom right
at its crease, took it into the kitchen and put it in a slender vase.
Hours later, inside the house, a girl awoke to a dark and
damp morning: a lonely day needing tea.
She flopped her feet to the floor, found her slippers,
grabbed a sweatshirt, and made her way down the hall to the kitchen.
The girl was homesick and
heartsick and in need of…
A flower.
Left with its mates in the bed, the little bloom would never
have been noticed or loved. But there, in the little green vase on the cold,
metal counter in the great big house, in the dark, wet country, it was more beautiful
and more wanted than any other petal on the grounds.
A good gardener knows his flowers.
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