Semper Augustus

I can believe that tulips were once
worth much more than gold
that the beauty of a broken bloom moved
the sinews of men dressed exclusively in black
with silver buckles. Semper Augustus wore red
and white stripes—left them open-mouthed, a
pepperminted sweet, white cracked, like an egg,
showing the blood of birth inside, the drama of
carnal coloring, a simple vein calling to mind
the spark of embryonic sash, the yoke lain
on the shoulders of gamblers and wishers.
The word tulip means turban and the leaves
like sheathes of prayerful hands. Is to pray
to supplicate? Or to sacrifice oneself
to the antediluvian pull of petaled poetry
written with a pen only a creator could
fathom? I like the idea of a status symbol rolled
in dirt and quick to perish. How humble it seems,
compared to self-driving cars or meta-universes.
The romance of a flower with hardly a scent.
A tulip keeps growing after it’s cut, keeps opening
and closing as night stalks day it sleeps and wakes
with its watcher, getting longer and longer,
“leggy” we say as it creeps farther from the
vase, searching out the golden coins of sun.
Heads rolled when the market crashed against
the northern shores. Bulbs betrothed to futures
were exposed to be marauding garlic or shallots,
their oniony breaths caught stinking of hope
for ease. We shun those who search for ease, but
really why should we? Isn’t it hard enough
to push through the soil, to come back every year?