Lilacs

 I am thinking of the lilac-trees,
  That shook their purple plumes,
    And when the sash was open,
      Shed fragrance through the room.
                         - Mrs. Anna S. Stephens, The Old Apple-Tree

  the lilac bush
   leans against
   the barn door
   almost unnoticed now,
   past its moment in the sun,
   the pyramids of purple curls
   faded, weepy, spotted with rust;
   now peonies await applause,
   roses waiting in the wings,

   yet its fragrance
   denies the present,
   does not linger
   gently in reminiscence
   of glory days in May,
   it rides strong on the wind,
   assaults me, stops me
   in my tracks
   with an elegance so sharp,
   so piercingly sweet,
   it cuts my breath
   in half

   what alchemy connives
   to outwit age
   in this gone-by bush?
   what churns in the bowels
   of roots, up the highway
   of veins, out the flowering pores,
   to paralyze so sweetly
   with perfume the white-coated
   chemists struggle to imitate
   in laboratory beakers?

   as with other
   unfathomables
   ever within grasp --
   children, hummingbirds,
   the complexity of cabbage heads
   and cats' minds --
   the fragrance of lilac
   is a mystery of the ordinary,
   a sacramental leading
   to deeper mystery

--Ethel Pochocki Brooks, Maine