Pressed Flat And Labeled

Cut at the stem in the ninth week, pressed between blotting paper under the collected weight of an encyclopedia, the specimen surrenders its third dimension and keeps the other two. Color drains toward an honest brown. The label records latitude, elevation, the name of a person now also pressed flat by time. What the drawer holds is not the plant. It is the fact of the plant, the proof that on one morning it stood in a particular light and someone thought it worth keeping. The flower is gone. The keeping remains, indexed and exact and quietly triumphant over the season that made it.