Bouquet

Cool night air enters the room, bringing a scent of damp grass and leaf mold, but also a hint of some sweet fragrance. What flower could be blooming now, on the last day of September? No chrysanthemum or narcissus grows nearby, and I don't think they emit such a scent, in any case. Perhaps it is only another of those phantom fragrances occasionally generated by some quirk of my brain, yet it seems quite real, however faint. Its apparent presence evokes a vision of some exotic garden concealed among the mundane yards and dull houses, or the ghost of some vanished garden that was here in another age, and has now somehow intersected with this moment, drawing my thoughts to wander paths once lit by moonlight long since reflected back to the sky of ancient nights and scattered beyond the nearer stars.

A leaf falls from the mulberry tree, and the sound of its descent returns me to my room. I don't know how long I wandered in that other world, but now it is now, again, with Venus rising in the east and the moon high in the west, and all the other stars have been lost to the brightening of the sky. No garden can remain concealed from the approaching dawn, which dissolves illusions and sends fancies scurrying for cover in the recesses of the mind. Still, I can wish that its light would fall on some flower never before seen, and its warmth coax from it a fragrance that dizzies even the bees. Should that perfume drift into my dreams, I wouldn't be displeased.