ACTUALLY, WE HAD WHITE ONES THIS YEAR AS WELL.

Milicroques (Foxgloves) * by Jean Gebser

A butterfly dancing
by the sea,
a foxglove emerging
fragile and fierce
cleaving
to a granite wall:

A glittering chalice
captures the whole sky,
a single wing
bears the sun entire:
fate’s transformations,
and pure transference:

A flower
evolving into flight,
and flight
dissolving into light.

* Milicroques is the regional name of a delicate blue flower that blooms on the walls of Santiago de Compostela (Province of Galicia). [J.G.] Gebser’s delicate-blue flower (flor de un azul delicado/zartblauen Blume) is more commonly known as the foxglove (digitalis purpurea, literally, ‘purple fingers’). Its long, bell-shaped, pale violet petals fit over the fingers, hence the Latin name.

Jean Gebser was a Polish linguist, philosopher and poet. He died in 1973.  He lived in Italy and then in France. He then moved to Spain, mastered the Spanish language in a few months and entered the Spanish Civil Service, where he rose to become a senior official in the Spanish Ministry of Education.