The Antique Lilac
/This year, after a miserably long and cold Michigan winter, the natural world up North is full of blooming wonders. And one of the most remarkable examples of the exuberance of this spring is the antique lilac that lay on the ground for years behind the forsythia out by the road, and which we hoisted up a couple of years back with a clothes-line tied off on a cedar stump. In past years, if there were a bloom or two we were impressed. But this year, the lilac, here to prove that age has nothing to do with vitality and creativity, has done itself proud. Virginia Woolf said "I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun." I guess we helped the lilac do that: we altered the lilac's aspect to the sun. Interesting to ask ourselves how we do that for each other.
The Antique Lilac
Bit by bit
we lift it
back into the sunlight.
It’s grown
for years
hidden and bent,
crouching
along the ground
beneath the tangled pines
down by the road.
(Until last year
I didn’t know
that it was there at all.)
So in my decades
here, in this my
cottage homestead
on the lake,
it’s grown in darkness,
blooming
against the odds.
Unseen.
Now rediscovered,
it’s a mad profusion
of huge grape-like blooms
heavy and rich, deep purple,
hanging high in sunlight
where we’ve propped it
with a clothesline pole
made of a two-by-four,
and resting on a rope
between two trees.
It fairly shouts of beauty.
If it could sing,
it would sing opera
and you would hear it
clear across the lake.
One has to meet it,
such a twisted,
tangled thing,
where it has grown
over the years,
and move it gently,
carefully
toward the light—
A hundred year old lilac
doesn’t invite
sudden change—
It needs encouragement and space,
time and support,
to grow into the light
from which it first
took root.
Judy Brown
Michigan, May 17, 2010
-from The Art and Spirit of Leadership