Fresh floral specimens consisting of, depending on the day, tulips, daisies, lilies, hydrangeas, or cosmos stand upright in a vase on a table. At times they are clad in all white or all red and at times the botanical wonders create a colorful bouquet. Their stems are strong and support the bright open flowers much as a male dancer confidently lifts a ballerina - petals like arms spread wide, open and free. The stems are the life giving conduit on which the burgeoning blooms depend. Day by day young buds, waiting impatiently to open, begin to push apart their enclosure until they are fully awake.
Then one day the stems, no longer turgid and youthful, begin to bend under the weight of gravity, no longer able to hold up the ballerina-like flower.. They are too weak to drive the nourishing elixir upward that the flower needs to survive. Petals begin to droop, curl and dry. They are tired and not quite strong enough to hold themselves high. They become translucent and paper-like, their veins clearly visible. Eventually they will gently fall one by one to the tabletop.
At this juncture the first instinct may to be to discard them as being beyond their prime. Maybe there is a fleeting moment of recognition for a job well done, but one quickly moves on and looks forward to the next youthful bouquet. But something captures your attention as you walk by the table. You see a still life that could hardly be described as still. You notice the gentle curves of the petals and instead of decay you see the arms of a dancer reaching outward from the still center of a pirouette. You see lifts and a conductor directing the symphony that drives the dance. In the waves of the reflection of cosmos, once pure white, you see the ripples of time. You run and get your camera hoping to record these natural beauties in action.
Ah- the ephemeral nature of a flower as it opens and closes. I could wax philosophical and go deep into a contemplation of life and death and the passage of time. Buy my inclinations are less sentimental and most certainly less profound. What I see in the photographs of these beauties, at first inchoate, is a story emerging from the curves and shapes that seem to glow from within the paper-like skin. I see colors that are still rich even in old age. I see the energy of a dance and the reflection of timeless natural beauty in ripples of water. I see a complete opus - a beginning, a middle and an end of the life of a flower. I see the dance of a lifetime. Of course there will come the day when they will be left to decay behind my house. They will go back to the dirt from which they arose. But until then they will display their striking timeless beauty, every stage of it, until every petal has wilted and dropped. The images they inspire will not embody despair, but a dance performed with never a care.
