Wild Iris

The Blue Flag Iris.  Also called Poison Flag among a multitude of other names.  Why is it flowers have so many names, anyway?   I prefer the generic name.  Wild iris.  Wild and free.  How I long to be.  How I might have been before.  It lives a brief and beautiful life, unfolding one day and gone the next  And yet, the entire plant is toxic to animals and humans.  A poetic mix of beauty tempered by poison.  Like much of life these days.  And why is he named Blue Flag?  Looking more like amethyst crystals sparkling in the morning sun than then a pile of sweet blueberries ready for a summer pie.  So much of life is one thing but then really the other.  I feel like I could fall in love with this little soldier bloom, the size of my iPhone I think as I steady to capture his image.  Seven Blue Flags were waving at me this morning as I opened the front door. Did they communicate rhizome to rhizome during the cover of a moonless night?  I imagine them counting down to their morning reveal while I tossed and turned. I wondered the fate of my sister, fighting for her life from cancer.  Did the wig I bought for her fit?  They simply planned to bloom.  The wild iris is a symbol of peace and serenity a website called the MindFool tells me. I could use some of that mind foolery now and forever more.  In Japan the blue iris symbolizes hope and faith. Two qualities I work on and am reminded of when my husband shows up, home early from golf because his hands hurt so bad he wants to cry.  And when my seventy-year old friend mentions to me as we stand on his deck overlooking the bay, "Wow, never thought I'd make it to this far. Now I am looking for one more decade." One more decade? I shiver at the thought that my own seventieth birthday is near.  I remember when my father used to live like that and it did him well.  "I hope to make it to ninety," he whispered in my ear from his deathbed at the age of eighty-nine.  I look out on my little iris soldiers of beauty and remembrance of all that is right and good, and maybe perfect in this world.  A world that is often purple but frequently identified as blue. All I have to do is open my front door.  I see you winking at me wild iris.