Ribes Sanguineum

What's in a name?

The red-flowering currant outside my window stood naked. I envied the plant’s shamelessness and her elegant, if haunting, scientific name: Ribes sanguineum. Her self-possessed branches pointed skyward, while I sat inert, half-heartedly coaxing my inner writer from her cozy den. We had a self-imposed deadline. El Camino, Part 2 was past due.

I should have known better. My writer hates to be rushed. Thwarted, I turned my attention to the Ribes sanguineum, admiring her bare beauty, anticipating the secrets enveloped in her tiny leaf buds, wondering if my dormant period would sync with the seasons, willing my hibernating writer to follow the currant’s lead.

I watched the Ribes’ lobed leaves emerge. Their verdant unfurling emboldened me. I let my writer be and went it alone, slapping try-hard paragraphs together, struggling to bring the essence of my adolescence to the page. Piling up words, telling, not showing. Following my nostalgia on detours. Miles stretched between each new word and the story’s crescendo. My writer rolled her eyes and curled up in a ball in the corner, leaving me to my own devices.

I threw up my hands, shoved my writer into a suitcase and took her to Costa Rica. I hoped a change of scenery would inspire her. For two weeks, she idly watched me play in the ocean and walk on the beach. We listened to the throaty calls of howler monkeys, the songs of audacious birds. Immersed in beauty, my mind slowed its anxious pace. I stopped pestering my writer. El Camino, Part 2 languished.

Now it’s mid-March, and we’ve been home for almost two weeks. My writer has not returned to the page. She’s wary. I don’t blame her. My anxiety’s back and I’m imposing deadlines again. I blame our mucky writer’s rut on the state of the world, but that only makes our wheels spin, digs us in deeper. We’re both sick of this woe-is-me narrative, this paralysis. If we wait for the world to change, if we wait until we feel better about what we’re contributing to the greater good, if we worry about our penchant for navel-gazing, we will never, ever, write again.

I whisper apologies to my writer, saying everything’s going to be all right, trying to convince her the act of writing will make us feel better. The cursor blinks its indifference. An insistent black line in a sea of drivel. We look away, stretch our eyes toward the front yard, and inhale springtime.

The sun shines hot and bright. The currant is dressed in showy pink blooms that complement her abundant foliage. A hummingbird visits one pendulous blossom after another, sipping sweet nectar, hovering at eye level for a moment before darting away. Nature’s splendor seduces us. Words flit here and there like butterflies. A few of them alight on the page.

in the company of flowers

for once

we are oblivious to our old aches

to the overreaching oligarchs

to the obliteration occurring all around us

My writer gathers word bouquets. I hold my breath. Wait for magic. Travel back in time.

I am a small child

studying sporadic wildflowers

in a mountain’s shadow

I am a schoolgirl

striking poses with abundant peonies

planted in a tidy row

An elusive noise interrupts our flow. We turn toward the whirring, mesmerized by the timeless dance of fauna and flora courting.

a tiny throat clad in ruby feathers
fancies blush-tipped petals drenched in morning sun

Ribes sanguineum

We delight in the way the plant’s Latin name encircles our heads like a lazy-day daisy chain. We picture it written in an arc of curly pink letters, mimicking the flower bending to meet the hummingbird’s expectant beak. Petal-shaped words cascade down. I resist an urge to contain them.

Ribes
sounds like rubies

Ruby
deep, dark red
precious gemstone the color of blood

Sanguineum
sounds like sangre

Sangre
Spanish for blood
like Sangre de Cristo

New Mexico Mountains, our mountains

Sanguineum
bloody

tinged with blood

the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation

Sanguineum
bloody
blood-red
bloodstained

the stain of colonialism, the dye of hegemony

Sanguineum

our hands, our fingers
tinged with blood

the blood of fearsome foreigners

the blood of neighbors, the cup of pandemonium

Sanguineum

our country, our conscience
stained with blood

the blood of “little excursions”

the blood of schoolgirls, the cup of damnation

Since when are our neighbors foreigners?
Since when are we afraid of schoolgirls?

My writer demands the truth.

Since always, I’m tempted to say, but I let the questions hover there, below damnation. I heave a sigh and turn back to the window, to the red-flowering currant. Will I ever be able to look at her without thinking of blood?

What’s in a name? Ribes sanguineum asks coyly, ruby-kissed blossoms swaying, as she stretches her fearless limbs skyward.

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