Observation

By Anna Bernard

I see myself as a child industriously, curiously, dismantling flowers. I'd find an aging rose that was already played out, opened too far, petals beginning to hang limply from their holding spots - and I'd pull the petals all the way off to study them and marvel at the softness, softer than anything I knew. I'd study the way the color sat so deep inside and couldn't be rubbed off. I tried. I experimented with paper and a pant's leg but it was in there to stay - crimson, blush and butter - securely sealed in the rose petal fabric. Which was what exactly? It held together well but also tore if you tugged enough - similar to a well made paper towel. The colors made me dream about lipstick purchases of the future and beaus, gifts, proms, and wedding bouquets and all the things that made women smile.
The tuft, the sad plucked tuft, was reduced to a bit of plant life with all the beauty gone.
I marvel that I was once an observant child with time on my hands and summer afternoons to explore the natural world of a surburban neighborhood and I wonder if current children have time and opportunity to learn by direct exploration. I wonder if I would still know how to take delight in close observation. My world now is text, books, newspaper, HD television, movies, photocopies and the internet. Now that I am so recently and abruptly retired, I want the time to observe again in a relaxed state and leave tasks in the dust - the soft, loamy pale milk and coffee colored dust of a trail in late September - the kind that coats your shoes or your bare feet with the Earth's affection.

Roses
Roses in a garden.
Of all the gifts I treasure from my students
nothing quite compares
with a slightly frumpy, thorny rose
wrapped in a wet paper towel,
then wrapped in foil.
"For you, Teacher."
I always feel special.
Roses in a garden
Make me think of hot summer days
sprinklers and bees
sprinkly pollen
flower guts.
Roses in a garden.
I used to pull the old ones apart
to examine the interior.
I pulled a few new ones apart
to discover the way the petals
folded together and
squashed themselves up tightly.
To be closed upon oneself
is an amazing thing to children
who can't remember
when they were wrapped up tightly
and folded over on themselves
in the womb...
Rose in a garden.