Susan Griffin (1943- ) the eco-feminist author's poem "Love should grow up like a Wild Iris in the Fields" conveys to us the theme in the opening lines itself that 'true love should be as spontaneous as the wild iris which springs up and blooms most unexpectedly after a thunder storm,'
"Love should grow up like a wild iris in the fields,
unexpected, after a terrible storm."
Ideally, love should be spontaneous and unexpected but the reality is very different. The daily dreary routine of family life destroys the spontaneous give and take of true love. It gets completely choked and suppressed by the dull monotonous and boring duties of daily household life like cooking a meal for the family, feeding the baby or taking the clothes to the cleaners,
"Love more often is to be found in kitchens at the dinner hour,
tired out and hungry, lingers over tables in houses where
the walls record movements, while the cook is probably angry,
and the ingredients of the meal are budgeted, while
a child cries feed me now and her mother not quite
hysterical says over and over, wait just a bit, just a bit."
Susan Griffin captures very poignantly the feelings of many people who yearn for true love which is as spontaneous and reinvigorating as the sudden and unexpected blooming of the wild iris after a thunder storm. Like all ideals this desire for spontaneous, instinctive and impulsive love continues to be an unfulfilled dream. Susan Griffin foregrounds the gap between the ideal and the day to day reality by repeating twice the lines,
"Love should grow like a wild iris
but does not."
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