I wake Christmas morning without remembering my dreams--except for an odd line from a song stuck in my head. "Keep all the Samphires burning; don't let the lights go out." Not campfires or sapphires--Samphires. That makes no sense. Have a vague memory Samphire means something--I think it's a name. Person, place, what?

I find out half an hour later as I eat breakfast when I open a kids' graphic novel my housemate Alder got from the library yesterday--5 Worlds: The Emerald Gate by Mark Siegel et al. On a vegetable planet we meet a tall native evolved from a green bean, whose moral decision to aid outsiders eventually saves the Five Worlds. What's the sentient stringbean's name? One guess!

Coincidence? Suuure! Have you EVER encountered, heard or thought of this word, let alone sung it obsessively all morning, wondering why? Yet reverse the time sign and it makes sense. I encounter it, I'm struck by it, so my mind plays with it--just before instead of after!

Physics accepts that subatomic particles interact reversibly, but when big, shambling conglomerations of particles like me claim the same reversibility, physics gets all snotty and calls it superstition.

I look up the song I suspect it's from--"Underground" by Men at Work. Yep, that's the source, but he sings "homefires", which makes more sense than campfires or Samphires. Try a dictionary, not expecting to find it. But I do. Samphire's an alternate name for pickleweed or glasswort.

Samphire (meaning #1)

Samphire (meaning #2)

Something nags me. Open my old copy of Wild Edible Plants of the Western US, which I studied in the 1970s. Glasswort's there--a scaly salt-flat plant growing edible pods. And there's samphire--listed as an alternate name. So I likely did see the term, 45 years ago--once!

Prior exposure still doesn't explain its abrupt eruption after half a century of amnesia, just before reading it.

It's an interesting Christmas gift.

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