on being a bud

I walked past some daffodil buds on the way to work yesterday. Which wouldn't have been a big deal if it weren't for the month of February. Winter's last full capsule. And they looked quite impatient, ticking their sunny pulses as if to say, "time is running out, we absolutely cannot wait for spring." And my mind, no less a child than the flowers, dutifully planted a garden, denying the buds their very being. In a flash, I sent up purple and white crocuses, pink hibiscus with their waxy yellow stamens poking through, and so on. I called in extra hands to drum up early tulips and late roses alike. How quickly we rush to the illusion of future, the dream of perfection when the day of perfect bloom will arrive and we will for one millisecond have the breathless moment of 'Ah', this is what we've been waiting for. There is one problem: the buds may never become flowers. They may make it all the way and get killed by frost. Or get swept away by the wind. And yet as a culture, as a human race, we are obsessed by this moment of magic where we have scaled development to something so small, we can't even measure it. Let alone touch it, or live in a circle around it with our arms open wide. The buds are perfect, as was the bulb and as will the drooping, season's-end flowers turning from yellow to brown. And back again. To the old woman and the young girl, to the first bliss-blast of honeymoon love to the mature, 'where-did-you-put-my-slippers silver couple, it is the same thread, the same bud, the same love that we put into boxes of time and meaning to give ourselves some semblance of control. Which is its own illusion.