Fallen Flowers

Perhaps it's my age but I find myself drawn to the flowers and petals strewn on the ground. The flashy show of dazzling blooms still attached to the branches are almost too much. They almost look artificial, like something an over-enthusiastic young designer might come up with. They are a collective show of perfection multiplied to the point of gaudy.

But they share the fate of all of us, to be cast adrift on a short downward flight and then to slowly wither back into the soil or, as in the case of these flowers, get swept up and smothered in a bin-bag that will be buried on a landfill site. What a desperate way for a thing of beauty to end. Give them a few more minutes, please.

But they have not all gone yet. Lying prone on the ground they begin to look like individuals. They always were but it's easier to see now. Each has landed in its own little space and each has struck its own pose. The withering starts as an edge of brown that grows, slowly melting the petals out of shape. I find them beautiful in their imperfection and get down to meet them at their level.

Some have fallen into the swimming pool and huddle together in rafts. Riding ripples they are never still, shifting, rotating, dancing in a nearly imperceptible swirl that only ends as a hotel employee scoops them into a net.

One looks to be struggling, losing its buoyancy and slowly getting dragged underwater but I pull myself away from imposing my own angle. As far as I know, no suffering is involved and it might even be a glorious feeling to be a flower consumed by water.

Another flower has landed on a car roof and gently blesses the hard shine with a tender kiss.

These fallen flowers are out of place but not incongruous. Any surface, any space can be graced with their natural scatter of colourful debris.

The flowers' final little show of glory. It has no purpose as no useful pollination can occur. It's like the flower is finally displaying for itself. Retired and rejected but still proud.

As I said, it might be my age that sparks these thoughts. At 59 I have a slow dawning that our world is no longer mine. I don't resent the change, it is almost freeing, but the force that drives the world's ways is a younger wave than the one I rode. I am content and have plenty of time left to watch as an interested, and still involved, spectator but as attention is drawn to the wash of younger blooms above, I can feel my edges turning brown.