Archaefructus sinensis

The ancester of all grains, fruits and blossoms may have been a fragile plant that lived in a Chinese lake 125 million years ago.*

When the hair-like roots
of the almost colorless, petal-less
first flower fingered deep into

the primordial muck of a pond,
our ancestors were still rudimentary
creatures skittering among rocks.

This morning I, too, am simple
with color and scent, windows
open to air fragrant with viburnum

and lilac, to pink and white blossoms
of crabapple, dogwood, magnolia,
to a humming of variegated greens.

Think back along billowed eons,
to evolving petal and leafbract. Think back
to the drift of a thousand slow centuries,

to that first mother plant, still swollen
with seed. From its need to be seen, sniffed
and tasted, called forth pupil and retina,

olfactory nerve, teeth, lips and tongue,
that it might be devoured, digested, excreted,
that it might ride on the pinions of blackbirds,

burrow in the secrecy of forests, leap
high on Andalusian wheatfields, find
this table, this bowl of blue china.

*Science magazine.

copyright 2003 Sharron Singleton