THEIR KIND OF LIFE

Last year at around this time, when I was more botanically ruthless (had less ruth?) than I am now - may it ever be so - I mowed down all the dokudami that clustered naturally here and there, with leaves like dark-green ruby-trimmed hearts.

In my hopefully diminishing ignorance I viewed them not as desirable plants, but as noxious weeds, simply because they now grew where they wanted, having spread beyond where they'd been planted.

That evening I regretted what I had done when here and there in the darkening I saw the remotely surviving remnants with white-jade teardrop buds put forth their solo white blossoms with golden hearts, bright even in the dusk, like stars on the ground.

So yesterday and today, when I mowed I mowed around wherever the dokudami were now thriving in their dusky green cloisters, thanks to their hard work of winter now come to fruition.

This evening I am rewarded as those green gatherings of their kind of life unfold their blossoms in the same pure-white, golden-hearted hope of tomorrow that we ourselves bring forth in the darks of our days, that this path be the true one...

Beautiful and countless things we hold in common with the natural world...