Many the wonder of spring
but the jaw-dropping best of them all
is a flower that never had bloomed
until one redoubtable fall.
A lilac in fall?
What could it portend?
Why in that dismal
tormented year’s end?
Pandemic exhausted,
hostility worn,
with leaves curled in death,
dry and forlorn,
we slumped into autumn
weary of strife,
and here blooms a lilac
with anomalous life.
A lilac in fall —
a thing beyond reason —
would it come back again
in traditional season?
The purpling answer
no nose can resist
nods in affirmative
its resolve to exist.
As fancy a flora
as ever hoorayed
exalts this springtime
in new life arrayed.
In my years here, this lilac had never given the slightest indication that it knew how to make a flower. Then, in the last gasps of 2021, it bloomed! An autumn-blooming lilac seemed in keeping with the chaos of the times. But would it bloom in the spring? Now we know!
Oddments 
May 1, 2022 at 1:48 pm
This is a lovely poem, and a wonderful treat from Mother Nature. Maybe the lilac just figure out how the whole blooming thing works. Maybe it will bloom again in October. They are such pretty flowers.
May 1, 2022 at 2:35 pm
Thanks, Dan, for the encouraging word for me AND for the lilac! I will pass along to it your thought that it might bloom again this fall. Wouldn’t that be something? I think this is the first lilac I’ve ever had and I am loving it.
May 1, 2022 at 4:19 pm
How wonderful — perhaps even Providential! Never heard of a lilac blooming in any season but Spring!! Lovely poem, too (as always)!
May 1, 2022 at 4:24 pm
Thanks! I did want to see that autumn bloom as a sign. I wonder if the lilac knew war was coming and it bloomed out of compassion. More likely I just want to think it would.
May 1, 2022 at 5:42 pm
Thoughts are powerful. 🙂
May 1, 2022 at 10:07 pm
Can you see me smiling from over here? Love the poem, and I’ve never met a lilac I didn’t love. We had a magnolia bloom late summer for the past two years. If there is anyone out there who doesn’t believe in the issues pertaining to climate change, they really need to just check on the plants.
May 1, 2022 at 11:19 pm
Good point! The plants know! A magnolia blooming in late summer and a lilac in late autumn — definitely they know something! Glad you liked the poem — I am really excited to have a lilac bush that grows actual lilacs!
May 3, 2022 at 10:17 am
The bloom last fall was special encouragement, just for you. Now it’s back to business doing what nature intended 😀
I’ve been away from my garden for a month. I wonder if my own lilac will gift me with a bloom upon my return…
May 3, 2022 at 10:48 am
I hope it will! That would make a lovely homecoming.
May 3, 2022 at 6:35 pm
Hurray! I hope, now the flowers are finally unleashed in season, that many, many more will be purpling your corner of the world.
May 4, 2022 at 12:29 am
Thank you, I hope so too! It has been a real wonder to look out the back and see these.