The nature of nature, is where blooms transform to seed. It’s not an ugly process, far from it. It’s life-process. Does it begin with the egg of the solitary bee who pollinated this flower?

It’s not a catastrophe, but a sacred process. Look further to ecological death, and life. It’s love. We may look at our own bodies in the same way. Don’t fret about flowers ‘going over’. They are beautiful.

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Anxiety grips me again, during just a handful of days this time. Matter builds as crystals from the process of evaporation, and all the little thoughts become sharp and transparent.

I have been observing my balcony flowers going ‘over,’ their delicate petals beginning to wither and curl, as if kissed by poison. As the draw of their shapes and colours fade, it would be easy to cut them off to keep things in check. The beauty, or love, is ever more enduring than the colour or scent of the blooming flower. The work of the bee or the fly has set in motion deep changes within ancient organs that sustain life. Nothing is going over, moreover, everything is beginning.

The fertilized seeds are beginning to swell, the baha sucked back through the veins of each petal, and up from the roots, to grow new seeds. This flow, this transfer of love in the form of metabolites from flower to ovary, is for-newal.

When a flower is cut dead for the sake of what we humans deem tidy, or aesthetic, or out of place, what worth are we assigning to the plant and seed? Or the bee and her egg? Life is growing inside, at first shy, but then erupting to ripe moments of genetic and evolutionary potential.

Black Lives Matter. Three black women founded this now global movement. Two identify as queer, and one has worked for a long time in the field of domestic abuse. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi. Remember their names.

Like bees, all three have set in motion a beautiful but painful blooming, of instilling the will of justice and love inside so many more. Ripe seeds of empathy are broadcast widely. With sunlight, good soils and pure water, these efforts are growing into powerful new relationships in the face of many wrongs.

Every black life matters. The oppression endured over this last 400 years has forged survivors like diamonds. Their lives materially and spiritually matter to us all. George Floyd and hundreds, thousands, millions, of black lives have been cut dead, stolen from their loved ones and buried deep. Millions have lived in fear, incarcerated, and disenfranchised.

I want to acknowledge that pain, and my white British ancestral role in its coming. It must now leave, as it should never have been. It’s a personal and public struggle in which we all need to be willing and able to participate, from bee to seed.

I’ll end with Professor Cornel West’s words said in public discussion this last few days, still raw from the death of Breonna Taylor, a medical carer herself, who was shot to death by a militant police force, in what was supposed to be safe sanctuary ~ home.

“We can’t bring her back, but the memory will empower all to keep fighting.”

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