Justice will be done.

When?

When the living know what the dead suffered.

John Berger, Pig Earth

 

 

Reaching into the blue it appears resolute, full of promise, and I find it beautiful. Strange, though, to think that its emergence signals demise. Having launched its flower stalk towards the heavens the agave will now – after 10 or 20 or 30 years of waiting – die. Semelparity, the biologists call it. Everything, life itself, is staked on a single reproductive event.

We reap the rewards of this kind of wager, since grain crops and many familiar vegetables are semelparous. But we forget, perhaps, the sacrifice.

We are wont to forget such things, or forget, at least, that there are questions worth asking. This, for instance. What had to be done, what had to be acquired or renounced so that I might take my place in this world.