Iris

Early spring in all my early years a trip to the nursery following my mother from bed to flowery bed, from tray to tray of even more bountiful color, annuals of deep purples and reds, golden yellows—coreopsis and cock’s comb, changed to coxcomb for that most early virtue of political correctness, filling a child’s coaster wagon, the perennial Radio Flyer, overflowing with snap dragons, poppies, sunflowers, foxglove and phlox: and pansies with their faces like Disney children looking wondrous at the world, a sacred pilgrimage as any to the Holy Land.

So I had some awareness of flowers, their beauty and value to my mother and once, in a vacant field a block away, land undeveloped though it would be but a short time before hammers opened the morning as they struck 10d nails in a melodic pattern almost like a call to prayer, I found a waste of iris, dumped there by someone, someone who did not need them, did not want their wild purple upstaging their backyards, a well-manicured convention staged for envy of such disciplined control.

But I knew the sensuous grandeur of iris and returned to the field with my own red wagon and filled it and brought them home, a gift for my mother who took them and with her hands and a small trowel planted them in a large, churned space open to the sun.

Every spring they came back fuller than the year before, a glorious testament, a rejection really of that off-white, beige, or muted color fashioned in home design magazines of the time, the color of winter so much desired as a reflection of spotless cleaning. “Keep it neutral,” designers said, and their counterparts, real estate agents, looking for a quick sale: “If one wants it off the market, a neutral (read bland and dull to the senses) palette will entice prospective owners who can add their own color if they so wish.” Maybe a pillow here, a vase upon a shelf that catches the light of afternoon, a clock filling the open space on an indifferent wall to remind everyone of time and space lived colorless, bland as meat loaf and mashed potatoes for an evening meal.

I should have learned even then that beautiful things are often discarded, considered unnecessary, unwanted like collections of family photos found in antique shops, merely an inconvenience, clutter in someone’s life. But the invincible color of iris, a fecund statement to the world, lives in those years of perennial splendor, lives in my own backyard, a whole blanket of iris under a spreading maple, an old elm, returning every year promising dark blues, luxuriant purples, but because they live in shadow they rage green but do not bloom, though every spring I swear I will transplant them, always the promise, always the untruth of it all.

But this is what one does attempting to do the right thing—embracing but a college level intro to ethical philosophy—and falling short, pretending to do better, to have done better, when one has merely mucked it up in a different way from past believers, scripture prominent on a coffee table. I recognize myself, what I have become.

This morning, after a night’s rain, ground soft enough to dig, I stand on my honed shovel pushing it deep and remove a cartload of iris, plant them in a place the sun will reach and wait. Blind faith, faith as an extension of reason, it matters not. A slap in the face to do something, though even dreaming is solid work, for what is beautiful is often discarded, an inconvenient reckoning, the unwanted an offering, a flowering, an opulent benediction.

 

Dale Ritterbusch: “My contributions to the military-industrial-educational complex are considerable, including a couple of stints as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the United States Air Force Academy and as Professor of English in the even more militaristic University of Wisconsin system at UW-Whitewater. His creative work is currently being archived in the Department of Special Collections at La Salle University. Cemetery strollers will one day note the following on Dale Ritterbusch’s tombstone: HE DIDN’T READ THE MANUAL.”