At first you thought you’d plant it with the rest. But
you were defeated by its fragility and the stem’s refusal to
grow. The bulb turned out to be insensitive to spring and,
though half its name was light, sunshine meant nothing to
it. Glass made it glimmer like a living thing, but you soon
discovered it was not. Why call the object bulb, then? Why
give it that shape? Isn’t this fast advertising, the height
of corporate deceit, igniting our hopes that it will be a
brighter daffodil, a tulip for the dark, a gleaming gladiolus,
its tall stalk like a string of old-fashioned Christmas
lights turning on its blossoms one by one?
~from The Book of Marvels (Greystone Books, 2012)
