I had to push myself towards the lilacs this week – even though I wait all year for heaven on earth at sundown in the Arboretum, when hundreds of mature bushes sing with fragrance absorbed from the day’s warmth.  I went after work, after dinner.  After I knew there was only so much light remaining.  I knew I couldn’t skip it – and yet the thought of one more thing added at the end of the day drained me.

That all fell away as I turned into the first row of lavender, wine and white colored plumes reaching overhead into the blue spring evening – and reaching toward me with their tender, cascading bells to be caressed and inhaled.  There they were, some of my sweetest friends.  I’ve been visiting these creatures so long, camera in hand.  Searching their dense greens and radiant pendants of flowers for the invisible portal between what I see and feel and my longing to be here, to be loved, to be known.  Because in their presence, existing as they do for no purpose other than delight, I suppose that part of myself can’t help but step forward.  And she has a camera, and has painstakingly failed her way to occasionally using it to see what is not there otherwise.