When’s the last time you truly looked at a flower’s complexity. This morning my attention focused on the deep red poppies in front of our house, their petals beginning to tire and droop, the petals red insides each marked with a brush of black, the black fringe around the deep puple center and below that the bright green of a cup. The cup that I suppose holds the way into opium? The whole flower is held up on a strong slightly bristled stem and the very green leaves of the plant have a many pointed imagination of their own.
I don’t know the names of all the poppy’s parts but am awed by the complex nature and beauty of the plant. It’s so easy to not see what’s right there for delight. We have all kinds of cliches about this topic, of course we do. Yet how often do we look, truly look, give ourselves the time and focus to see what’s been waiting right there for us.
