Lilacs

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,

Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a miracle......and from this bush in the door-yard,

With delicate-color’d blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, 

A sprig, with its flower, I break.

—Walt Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d

I caught a glimpse of lilacs this morning in a yard near the office; they are so rare here, they always surprise me and gladden my heart.  They are so evocative of Santa Fe, of growing up there and yearning for the future as I now yearn for the past.  In those “lilac years,” like the name of Gustave Baumann’s woodcut print of purple lilacs draped over typical coyote fences, the dusky flowers draped, dripped, poured out of gardens everywhere, all over town, as irrepressible as the beginning spring, with that haunting fragrance, promising things I didn’t then know how to name.

Lilacs are reminiscent of the old world, too, carrying with them memories of old-world gardens left behind.  It was Bishop Lamy (famous from Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop) who brought lilacs to Santa Fe:

 “In the summer of 1867, following a journey to Rome and a stopover in his native France, he started over the Santa Fe Trail to return to New Mexico. In his supply wagon were precious cuttings of French lilacs.”

images:  Heirloom Lilacs, Michael Weishan

A Lilac Year, Gustave Baumann