Impassioned in the wild excess of youthful love
What was it for us to jump upon the moon?
To live beneath nothing but the stars above
Make watery sandbars our spaciously unswept rooms.
You told how as a girl you loved the scent of the orchid rose
The taste of the wild honey from this rare beauty
How you spent a lifetime searching where they grew
How it would please you to once again taste their dew.
In all my travels throughout the land I searched in vain
The months turned to years and the scent no longer drew
Our flame faded to at last go out with the winter rain
Leaving rivulets of the memory trickling few.
It was on a January day after a burn along the trail
That I caught the faint aroma of the orchid rose
So many years, was this the long remembered smell?
Was this which stirred such passion in the girl?
Parting the charred palmettos along the path
There, in a blackened clearing were the rosebuds
Not rain, but fire nourishing them into life!
A welling not from water, but love within flowing.
Marking the place I made a leaping start
Rushing to tell my love the orchids were found!
Breathe the scent deeply my impassioned heart
Tomorrow our youthful joys will abound!
If you are in desperate search of the orchid rose
Ask of me and I shall tell you where it grows.
Who can name the liberties taken in this poem? I shall offer the following: I have never seen more than one of these rare orchids. I do not think they grow in profusion, at least not enough for bees to make honey from their little flower. The Orchid blooms in the Spring, around April to May.
ReplyDeleteThe main truth here is yesterday I returned to the site where years ago I found one of these Rosebud Orchids in the palmettos along the trail near Ocean Pond. It inspired a big what if poem....that is why we call it poetry and not technical writing.