Tulips

There were large red tulips on the table this week.  In the mornings, the low sun in the east comes through a spruce, breaking-up the rays, and the light glances sharply over the table.  The sun this week was in the tulips.  The sun could turn a red petal orange or simply put a lavender sheen the dark roll of a margin.  A velvety light passed through the petals. I watched against the light to see the gradation of shadows through different layers of petals.  There was a soft play of light and dark.

Comments

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I moved from the Midwest to the Southwest 8 years ago - and while I enjoy the desert wildflower/cacti bloom - it is not the same as spring in a 4-season part of the country. I used to bring freshly cut tulips to my office - enjoying how the play of light illuminated the myriad of colors and fine structure of a single petal. Thanks for reminding me, and letting me enjoy spring vicariously through your pictures and writing.

[424]

I moved from the Midwest to the Southwest 8 years ago - and while I enjoy the desert wildflower/cacti bloom - it is not the same as spring in a 4-season part of the country. I used to bring freshly cut tulips to my office - enjoying how the play of light illuminated the myriad of colors and fine structure of a single petal. Thanks for reminding me, and letting me enjoy spring vicariously through your pictures and writing.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.