The Wisteria

     I was sitting in American Lit today and our teacher is talking about Robert Frost and the nature imagery he uses in his poems. As if he knew my attention was drifting, he suddenly stood and asked the class,
     "How many of you know where the wisteria is on campus?"
A few raised their hands, myself included. To be perfectly honest, I only knew where it was because I have to walk under it on my way to class and it has hit me in the face on more than one occasion. The Wisteria and I weren't on good terms at the moment. Before I could continue pondering how my next confrontation with the plant would turn out, my professor continued:
     "That few? This is sad. That wisteria is famous. It is only in bloom for a few weeks during the spring.         Tour buses drop people off just to look at the wisteria for a few minutes and only four of you actually    know where it is. Start looking around. I want to you start observing and paying attention. Then maybe you can have a better understanding of what we study here"
          Shamed by my professor, after my classes were done, I went to look at the wisteria, this time carefully ducking my head, triumphing over the Wisteria branches. I sat against the tree, looking at the Wisteria, waiting for something extraordinarily deep and meaningful to happen. I was beginning to wonder how long Frost had to look at that fork in the road to write "Road Not Taken", when a group of tourists came shuffling by. Slowly passing me by, they all looked and pointed at me, as if I were some sort of rare animal. As they approached the Wisteria, I leaned forward eagerly to see how the tourists would react. Maybe they would smell deeply the purple blossoms or maybe they would admire it from a distance, commenting on the graceful way that it wraps around the trellis that supports it. No, none of these things happened. Something much better occurred, something that I will never forget.
     The tour group, so intently studying the college student who was studying them, ran straight into the Wisteria.