Today is my last day in Paris and this will be my last post on frogblog. I’m going back to California for a while or forever.
C’est la vie.
In my first post I talked about adjusting to life here. Back then I thought this blog would be about life in Paris. But it wasn’t, much.
I’m not the same person I was then, and this blog belongs to that other me.
I took my ninth and final November picture yesterday, while strolling through the Jardin des plantes. The morning sunlight on the smoked-glass windows of the greenhouses there turns them a glorious purple. Like an orchid. Or a bruise. Delectable against that bright November blue I love so much. You can see that some creeper has escaped its cozy confines. Those tentative tendrils probably won’t survive the winter. That’s what happens when you leave your hothouse.
Before I came to Paris in 2006 I wrote a poem about a greenhouse that was really about the love that brought me here in the first place and how safe and fulfilled it made me feel:
*****
she takes cover
under glass
stares at the sun
the sky cannot fall
in her hothouse
she turns to
smooth blooms
languid above
cool wet roots
lingers dazzling
look through windows
clouded with
velvet sweat
see her petals
in a translucent embrace
honey moonlight
waxes within
rising on the mist
she feels like
raw perfume
*****
I made a one-page book with this poem, which you can download and make.
Click the pic for a bigger version. See you around.
Links to previous years’ November photos below. More poetry and photos on my other blog, which is not dead yet. And other places you can find me on the web.