Talipot

Talipot has been saving up for decades — for one flower, and then goodbye. The talipot palm grows for thirty, fifty, eighty years as a great fan of leaves, storing everything, and then erupts: a towering inflorescence, millions of blossoms, the largest flowering structure on Earth — and then the tree dies, spent, complete. He is the Wanderers' monk: a lifetime of patience for a single sentence. "Other trees," he says, "write a little every year. I am writing one word, and it had better be worth reading." The bees come in clouds; the whole forest attends. When it is over, his children — a rain of seeds — begin their own long savings. Young palms ask if the ending frightens him. He unfurls another fan leaf, unhurried. "Frighten? It is the plan. The plan is the whole beauty of it."