my wild rose

My wild rose died. The exact moment of death was never noted, nor were any circumstances sought out. I made no note of it to anyone. Not “Home & Garden”, not the local paper, not even my immediate family.
It was a Tuesday, Trash Day, when the corner of one's eye hyper-ly seeks out distractions from the loathsome burden of 'hit the mark or miss out entirely until next Tuesday'. The Mafia does not dish out second chances. I always thought it incongruous that the Mafia holds a stake in Waste Management. Then again, what better daily legality to hide evidence than in a landfill, which explains why the natural urge: to scavenge there, is not allowed.
Now, you know why the events of Friday knocked me off my feet. It began over organic, free trade, instant coffee. I was dishing some honey out of my “Save the Bee Foundation” honey jar, when there was a knock at my door. I dropped the spoon into the honey. The spoon and I both gasped, as the honey made the sucking sound of a feeding butterfly, as golden as honey itself. Rising above the situation I went to the door. My daughter from New York stood like an Italian Water Fountain beyond the screen door.
Stunned slapped me soundly upside my frontal lobe. I opened the door with all the speed of anticipating heartache. She lunged forward, and threw her arms around my neck. She snuggled her moist eyes just above my left ear and whispered in the rhythm of her sobbing heart. “Don't worry Dad. We'll get through this”.
The trials of being her father flashed before my eyes. The utter joy, the heart stopping regrets, the singing DNA of hope eternal, all stopped in their tracks, and popped the question, “Now what?”
Hugs are much older than language, and far more essential. But she pulls away from me, and looks me in the eye, so I can see the cards she's laying on the table.
“I heard your wild rose died”.
“WHAT!” Every infinite space within my body shouted as the subatomic particles of essence came to a screeching halt, “WHAT?”
She looked away from me. She turned her head to the corner of the garage where I had planted the wild rose shortly after she had moved to New York and became as distant as ambition's siren.
From the back of her head I could tell that her eyes ,as blue as the gratitude of a summer's sky, took in the proof that my wild rose had died. Her body went as limp as a puppet whose strings had been cut.
I grabbed her as quickly as if I was twenty again, and she, again, was that two month old baby falling from the kitchen counter top straight to the tile floor. “But How?” My body, my spirit, my logic, all: denied what was happening. “But how?”
In my arms I felt her become whole again, strong again, my hero again. At that instant, I learned that touch between two people creates a new Life, not any sensation of mine or the other's, but the experience of a better life form, perhaps the highest life form we'll ever know in this world.
She felt it too. I could tell by the way she turned back to me and, yes, even as she stepped away from our embrace; I could tell.
These were worldly matters now.
“Dad, you know, I'm not a movie buff. Especially not films from the old school. But ever since this past Tuesday, Burt Lancaster has been popping up in my meditations on creativity and form. I had no idea who he was until he showed up in “Field of Dreams”. I don't know how many films he made, or how many interviews he gave, but I'd say he's appeared to me for each occasion. He's appeared to me from every stage in his career. Every time, he said the same thing to me, 'Your father's wild rose died, and he needs your help'. He kept me up all night on Wednesday. I had to get a flight”.
My head and lower jaw drop as if the strings of preparation had been cut by my aspirations for healing her.
She rubs the arms at my side as if I'm a magic lamp. “I came for the Service, Dad”.
“What service? There's no service”.
“There will be”, and she sashays past me, through the doorway of my large empty house and lights at my small kitchen table like the reflection of candlelight.
I put on the odd shaped kettle, hammered out by child labor as distant and as formidable as the Great Wall of China. I add some Fair Trade, Pure Spring Water collected in Hemp Canvass containers, shipped via 'free range,organically fed and documentedly so, Pure Ass over the Swiss Alps, to a French seaport, where it's loaded onto kayaks made from all natural products and paddled across the Atlantic by an Intuits who are paid, not in Francs or Dollars, but in Respect for their Tradition, finally arriving at the East Coast Ports of America. It's then put onto a travois and hauled by a Native American Indian who follows the various Trails of Tears to the 'Made in China- bought at Wal-Mart' water cooler on the West Side of Santa Cruz, California, on a solar stove made from recycled gutters.

Perhaps if I had been allowed to focus on my daughter, the next few hours would have been accessible to memory, or sense. But the phone rang as if it were going for some mechanical endurance record. It wore me down, unprecedentedly to two naps. I dreampt that the wooden screen door strummed as if it were decoding the DNA of God.
I remember that someone woke me shortly before the Service. 4 P.M. I recall smiling at the reciprocal of The Witching Hour- 4A.M.- the moment when the human body reaches maximum vulnerability. My guess is, that it was that shock of ironic laughter that brought my consciousness to bare.

There's hardly anyone here. No Priest. No pall bearers. No media. Not one body of voice for compassion, or support. No grave diggers. Just me, and my daughter.
Then, there was a feint flash of stage lightening. Then, seven seconds of rain, fell as lightly as if it had traveled a thousand light years, just so it wouldn't be noticed.
After a moment of silence, a Ragweed, cleared its photosynthetic throat, which is not anything like subduing a cough. The Ragweed clears its throat by massaging the air beneath its leaves, which then turns away from itself and enters beneath your skin, forming words. “I am the ninth generation who has lived beside this wild rose. I swear by all the genetic code in my being, which is tied together throughout the perception of Time's Past and Future, that this wild rose has been 'a boon and a blessing' to us. When there was drought, she gathered the dew. When there was searing heat, she gave us shade. When we stood alone without the possibility of a mate- she drew in the butterflies and the bees. Until the last of my kind are sieged out of this place, my children's umpteenth grandchildren shall know of her Good Works as surely as own their roots and leaves”.
The impossible can not be shared. Yet, only the impossible is shared between a man and his daughter. Nine Humming Birds appeared, and hovered before my dead wild rose. I'd never seen a family of Humming Birds, but -There -they -were. Their wings beat Stillness into a divine melody, “Among the man-made homogenized color schemes and despite their destruction of the scent of life, which is broader than their tiny little light spectrum, this Wild Rose was always been our Blinding Desire of Hope, and The Sweet Fragrance of Life”.
Then, these nine Humming Birds, turned in flight, as only they can move, faced my daughter and I, curtsied, and scattered too quickly for traces.

Silence.

Silence as taut as string between two empty cups longing for the touch of connection. Such cups can not be held, or guided, or conceived. They just clamp about
your heart longing to touch, your heart of hearts.
My wild rose died...
To arise from the dead, in me, three days, and three thousand miles later.