The Road Home

The road home is as familiar as the back of my hand. I've driven it thousands of times. Most times, it's at full-speed-ahead mode as I'm late to the next thing on my list. Sometimes, I'm moving at a snail's pace in a filled-to-the-brim wheat truck. Once in awhile, the shakes and rattles of a cattle trailer hitting the pavement form an unintended bass line to whatever is playing on the radio.

Early in our marriage, we lived in a house right on the Zenith Road. But in all those north and south trips, we've never noticed the irises until this year. I must give credit to my sharp-eyed farmer. He's the one who saw them first, and he earns major brownie points for sharing them with me. 

It was an added bonus that it was at the "golden hour," that time when real photographers say the light colors the world in magical ways.

The irises are a bit incongruous. Maybe they are at a site of a long-ago farmstead, but there is no falling down barn or cement foundation that gives us that clue. These days, they are flanked by a CRP field, the dry, brown grasses of winter a sharp contrast to the brilliant colors and soft petals that form the old-fashioned spring flowers. As we examined them more closely, we noticed several of the stems devoid of their blooms. They were likely food for the deer that flash in and out of the same trees and have been the source of more than one close call on our Zenith Road travels.

Irises remind me of my Grandma Neelly, who had them in her backyard. As I stood at her kitchen window, the purple blooms would make dishwashing less of a chore.

And I was blessed by memories colored purple.

The flower offered of itself
And eloquently spoke
Of God

In languages of rainbows
Perfumes
And secret silence...
~Phillip Pulfrey

 from Love, Abstraction and other Speculations