love in a puff

I.
puff/pəf/
noun
a short, explosive burst of breath or wind.
a light pastry case, typically one made of puff pastry, containing a sweet or savory filling.

verb
breathe in repeated short gasps.
cause to swell or become swollen.
advertise with exaggerated or false praise.

II.
I was down at the nursery a few weekends ago, shopping for plants the way some women shop for shoes, in the desperate joy of distraction.  It's one of my favorite nurseries in the city, for the diversity of the plants sold there and the grace with which they're displayed.  Here I first encountered the cypress vine, its delicate, winding trendrils dripping with crimson flowers; here I admired lavender verbena bonariensis, self-seeded, sprung from the gravel with all the insouciant, lanky grace of a supermodel.  I killed my most extravagant impulses and bought pansies, just simple winter pansies - a pure, clear blue, stained a sunlit yellow around the edges like a glass window.

I was checking out when I asked about the vine I'd noticed, the one all hung with delicate, pale golden pastries.  The proprietor smiled a slow, broad smile.  "It's love-in-a-puff!" she cried, and we walked together to the other corner of the yard.  She grabbed a papery pod and ground it between her fingers.  On her palm rolled a tiny seed, which she seized and held up to me: a black dot clearly imprinted with a sweet white heart.

The love-in-a-puff vine is an annual, and, she told me regretfully, it's too late this year to sow these seeds.  There's an obvious metaphor here, I thought, walking home, weighed down with my prosaic pansies.  The delicate, insubstantial structure which blows away in the winter wind, scattering the hard kernel, the season that is past - but I don't care to think it through to completion.


III.
And then - poof!  It's all gone.