The Hong Kong orchid tree in my front yard blooms magenta flowers the size of fists with leaves that look like lily pads. Its sweet nectar fragrance wafts across the yard and catches me.
When I'm walking back from feeding the cats, head down and caught in a maze of must-dos. When I step out into a moonless night to see the stars shine like Christmas lights left up past the new year. When I'm auto-piloting on the back-and-forth track to the laundry room.
Whatever I'm doing, its scent catches me like a car interrupting a curbside daydream.
This time of year it stands nearly bare, its skeleton unprotected from the alternating harshness of Hawaiian sun and rain. My cat scales it with ease. His footsteps drop leaves like melting icicles dangling from a south-facing eave.
It seems a strange time for it to go dormant, when most other living things are emerging from the deep sleep of winter. If I hadn't been here this time last year, I might mistake its slumber for something fatal flagging it. I might suffocate it with heaps of compost and fertilizer in an attempt to resuscitate.
But this tree is cycling to its internal rhythm. Independent of my deeply conditioned expectations of May. Independent of my desires and presumptions. Independent of this impatient audience shuffling in seats awaiting its performance, demanding to see colors burst forth this time of year.
Its mutedness is not antagonistic, but intentional. It stands solidly against the verdant cacophony of its environment. Adamant in its selfness, standing in stark sovereignty. Willing to bare itself in contrast, despite all external indications to do the opposite.
This tree's nakedness exposes its beauty. A beauty deeper than its smooth show of bark. A beauty that lies not in its flowering but in all its stages of being and becoming. In the very nature of its existence.
And following its own timing, it will make itself visible to the world again. It will express itself in a language that alerts us to its aliveness. When it's ready, and only then, it will call the bees with its blossoms.
It will astonish itself awake in a spectacular display of its vibrancy.
Credits
Accompanying music: Approaching Spring by Jakob Ahlbom
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