Returning to the Future

It’s time to return to considering the future in our today. I’m trying to ingest all that is happening right now in the world and parse the ransom note of news and current events and upheaval and discord and find something worth saying, something with at least the slightest poetic bent, something speaking with clarity through it all. Sitting with my family today, I finished my bowl of beans and rice with fresh tomatoes from our garden and cheddar cheese from Costco and salsa from the health food store, and I noticed one small rose waving in the wind. I saw it through our front window. The rose bush is most likely quite old; it was here when we moved in several years ago. I tend to it, prune it, water it. It mostly blossomed much earlier in the season, more toward the end of spring, and I am not sure what this rose is doing. What gall to attempt to bloom now, in the middle of August when all around it are the withering remnants of roses long past-the bush is now mostly thorns and leaves. The persistence of nature is certainly something real. Tonight I also spent nearly an hour pulling weeds from the woodchipped walkways of my backyard, walkways that bring me a sense of ease when they are free from weeds, walkways both my eyes and my feet can follow to flowerbeds and vegetable garden, garage and water descending over rocks. The weeds, though not nearly so beautiful as a small mid-August august rose, are equally if not more impressive in their resilience and craftiness and persistence. I can hardly believe the reproductive and bountiful prowess of these damned bindweeds. One really must give them their due respect. It is said an anti-cancer drug is derived from bindweed. I have not heard such accolades for the rose. Alas, this is truly a diversion from all that is going on outside the confines of my small home and yard to which I tend and occupy my overwhelmed consciousness, but it is also a picture of that which will thrive in the future. Yes, roses will continue to bloom, though maybe smaller and on a different schedule, and plants like the bindweed and the Siberian Elm, otherwise known as the weed tree, will flourish in a world that is hotter and drier, that is burning and concrete, that is drilled and mined. And we, humans, what shall we do? Follow the bindweed and weed tree into the urban deserts and proliferate through sheer craftiness and unwillingness to quit? For the flower of the bindweed has a beauty too, it is called a wild morning glory. Yet the bindweed doesn’t like competition, a healthy soil and strong plants will push it out, if we can keep those alive. We have choices. They all seem challenging, and they all seem to have a less than wonderful side to them. The rose was smaller, a vibrant pink leaning toward fuchsia, waving in the wind, compact and high upon the fading bush.