Somehow their filaments must conduct electric current up from the roots to a socket
built into the base of the flower. But there’s no lightbulb, so why do the throats of Morning Glories
glow as if nature throws a switch at daybreak and the light goes on? You’d think they’d swallowed
a sun the size and color of a cough drop that warms this cool solar system of a bloom.
That must be why the outer ring of petals—often an almost opaque blue in our backyard—
reminds me of the dark expanse of space that is visible at night only as a void separating us
from the stars shining overhead. As far as I know, the only way to get there is by hitching a ride
on someone’s imagination and the day Jules Verne comes back to write the story of travel
in a tiny vessel to the innermost reaches of a Morning Glory he will tell us the light was so
unique, so unearthly, the travelers could not look away and suddenly went blind as their ship sailed
into the bright center of the flower, captured by the gravity nature uses to keep its secrets from escaping.