Musing about next life brings unleashed wildflower to mind

The other day while reading William Blake, I came across a line he could have written in Maine: “To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

Lofty subjects to ponder- infinity, eternity, heaven – so I dismissed those, then simply concluded that in my next life, I wish to come back as a wildflower. Perhaps as a violet that spreads its layers of leaves across mounds of moss or as a rhodora, Acadia National Park’s most colorful wild azalea.

What’s appealing about life as a wildflower goes beyond the mere beauty of buttercups and clover, beach peas or fireweed; it’s the freedom to bloom anywhere it chooses, in fields, in widespread patches on old burns and along dusty roadsides. Maine wildflowers can’t – and shouldn’t – be contained.

Take the daisies, for instance, which suddenly appear in such numbers they whiten entire meadows and frolic in the summer breeze wafting from the bay. Or I might choose my next life as the stately lupine, which grows prolifically on hillsides, in between raspberry bushes, or anywhere it wants. On the other hand, try restraining lupine in orderly fashion within the boundaries of a flower bed, and pesky aphids will attack its vulnerability. Left wild, it thrives.

I would love to come back as a pink lady-slipper, but prefer sunlight to the dark, damp forest where the rare orchid blooms. And since I don’t care for heights, I would not choose to be a wine-leaf cinquefoil. Although the white flowers are a dainty surprise, springing from rocky areas, I don’t want to live on a mountaintop.

A home along the shore would be perfect, so I may come back as a rugosa rose, hardy and full-figured as a bush, fragrant as a blossom, and – later on toward fall – ripe for plucking as pulpy rose hips.

I don’t like its color or I might return in the next life as an orange hawkweed. Neither do I wish to be the pink-flowered lambkill and be relegated to living in swamps. On one hand, I like the bloom and the fact it grows from seashore to rocky hill, but there’s something unsettling about being called a chokeberry.

Not to mention a name that might prevent my even having a next life. (Who would want to be referred to as the devil’s paintbrush?)

Meadowsweet is far more appealing, and I could grow almost anywhere from June to September; or I could come back as plumb goldenrod and continue blooming until the leaves turned yellow and crimson in October.

Come to think of it, in my next life I wish to return as columbine: white, pink or purple. Its roots are tenacious, its leaves lush, its blooms determined. Columbine grows in the shadow of rock walls or spontaneously sends up its stems amid other perennials that are contained, cultivated.

The independent columbine, which pops up through gravel or shallow soil, which rules where it wishes to seed and flourish, which lives free, unrestricted. As any Maine wildflower should.