The perfect flower makes us pause. We stop and very possibly for the first time that day are present. We simultaneously want to share it with the world and keep it all to ourselves. Is it any less beautiful if it doesn’t smell sweet? Does it cease to be perfect if there are ants crawling on it, or does that magnify its beauty? The perfect flower appears as if it must have existed for all of eternity. But we know it’s a fleeting moment. Just a ripple. An illusion. The perfect flower is only in the space between breaths. It is the storms of the winter and the droughts and the driving snow and rain and wind.
The perfect flower includes the broken drinking glass and the slow-simmering wars and self-doubt and moments of elation as well as deep despair. The perfect flower is the slightly crooked stem formed early in the spring when a pine cone absently tumbled down on and refused to move from the new yellow-green bud bursting out of the soil with such childlike hope.
The perfect flower is unique as well as one of millions, billions. The forests that no one has bothered to name yet have just the right amount of perfect flowers, they had so yesterday before gaining forty-two new ones. They still have exactly the right number now.
The perfect flower is the imperceptible death and decay that starts on day one. Was anyone there to witness it? Would we have even noticed? Death is there in that bud, in that cloud, in that pine cone. Life and birth and rebirth a thousand times and perfection and good-enough and wish-i-could-be-better are right there as well. Today’s perfect flower will birth so many perfect flowers in the days and lifetimes to come. That flower will make the perfect worm and the perfect bird and the perfect happy little simple chemicals and water and vapor and clouds and broken windows and raindrops of dew.
There is no perfect flower without the accidents and pains and shames. The forest fires and claps of thunder and bird poop and buried nuts are its ancestors. There will always be perfect flowers, even without, maybe especially without our attention and labor and chemicals and worries and interventions.
The perfect flower is always in motion, always changing, always selfish and selfless, aware and blissfully alone. It is just as beautiful and imperfect whether you agree or not. The perfect flower is imperfect, that is exactly what makes it so perfect.
There are so many perfect flowers that simply will never be. They know they are perfect, but that pine cone was too heavy this year and wouldn’t budge. That perfect flower will have to be content with the knowledge that it is perfect even if it can’t actually exist in this world. It will be part of another perfect flower, perfect squirrel, perfect cloud, perfect darkest night of winter.
