Haibun: My Stories On an Agave Stalk
In the Sonoran Desert, each summer, the agave plant grows an odd, tall stalk. I best describe it as a six to seven foot asparagus like stalk that shoots up from a leafed bush: a bush usually between a foot to two feet tall most of the year. For a plant, it is un-elegant with how thin the body droops under it heavy top. It is the 15 year old boy who is sharp elbows and a big head.
We all would likely be surprised by the suddenness of this plant. There’s been no rain to suggest it, no other plants currently doing anything like this, just the agave plant pulling this asparagus like surprise party in the heart of this heartless desert heat.
But, as it is in so much of my life, I didn’t notice it until it was unavoidable. I didn’t notice it because the stories I tell myself—the stories I live out of—don’t include plants like this. They tend to revolve around the things I care about. My stories involve people I love and who create big emotions, they involve love decaying into apathy, focus constantly undone by boredom and something new, worries from the past on repeat just with a new cast, ambition, hope, strategy, etc., but nothing involving a plant. …well, until that collection of leaves grow a stalk that becomes too big, too fast, to be ignored.
Today, my stories bend with the colorings and flavors of unnoticeable change, sneaking change that forces acknowledgment. This plant and its skinny stalk with a big head is my new metaphor for change. And this new metaphor will keep weaving into my same repeated stories that slightly shift in each retelling until, like all good metaphors, it lets loose under whatever the turquoise winds of deep autumn brings.
oozed from the shale blue,
yellow, pink sunset too, but poked.
agave summers
We all would likely be surprised by the suddenness of this plant. There’s been no rain to suggest it, no other plants currently doing anything like this, just the agave plant pulling this asparagus like surprise party in the heart of this heartless desert heat.
But, as it is in so much of my life, I didn’t notice it until it was unavoidable. I didn’t notice it because the stories I tell myself—the stories I live out of—don’t include plants like this. They tend to revolve around the things I care about. My stories involve people I love and who create big emotions, they involve love decaying into apathy, focus constantly undone by boredom and something new, worries from the past on repeat just with a new cast, ambition, hope, strategy, etc., but nothing involving a plant. …well, until that collection of leaves grow a stalk that becomes too big, too fast, to be ignored.
Today, my stories bend with the colorings and flavors of unnoticeable change, sneaking change that forces acknowledgment. This plant and its skinny stalk with a big head is my new metaphor for change. And this new metaphor will keep weaving into my same repeated stories that slightly shift in each retelling until, like all good metaphors, it lets loose under whatever the turquoise winds of deep autumn brings.
oozed from the shale blue,
yellow, pink sunset too, but poked.
agave summers
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| & Haiku: Agave's Bloom |
