Blizzard of Petals

Before moving in with Peggy, which should have been a no-brainer, I dithered for three years. Three wasted years. We saw each other on trysts, getaways and assignations.

In what may have been our first such time together I asked if she’d remembered Last Year at Marienbad. Well, said I, How about next weekend at Carlsbad? And so we ran off to that sleepy little town to see the ranunculus and each other.

We never got around to the flowers. As I have come to realize since, anywhere I am with Peggy is a destination. As the poet said, Pebbles underfoot / the polishing of years / made jewels of. She doesn’t even require years to polish them. Everything becomes a nugget.

Since that first time in Carlsbad, we have visited those fifty acres of ranunculus on several occasions. A most amazing flower with colors blazing yellow as summer, orange as autumn, cobalt as a bluesy sax and red as the sanguinity I have been blessed with which Peggy radiates.

The petals of the flower unfold as our days have concentrically, centered and ever expanding, as if some sort of explosion of life has burst out of a dark hole.

Peggy has an alchemical way of converting the base metal of ho-hum to an album of unforgotten a-ha. She has antennae for the overheard and overlooked as well as for people, transformed by her open embrace.

Out of a window pane she saw the caves of Dordogne, white horses and possibly a blizzard of petals from those fields of ranunculus having seeded them by her unaccountable wand.