Month: April 2014

Morning Trip (121)

/ Elisa / Leave a comment

“Anna pulls her face back from an orange lily, aware of its pollen and of the hovering bee. Its ancestors must have done the same, shimmering down a stem of chicory some day in 1561, here or beside the church in the distance. She has noticed the gardien cycle past to unlock its doors. There must have always been a bee here to hear Catholic music and witness a verger’s arrival. The past is always carried into the present by small things. So a lily is bent with the weight of its permanence. Richard the Lion-heart may have stepped up to this same flower on his journey to a Crusade and inhaled the same presence Anna does before he rode south into the Luberon.”
–Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero p.77