One is voluptuous, a study of desire the way it is opened. The pale throat
of it offered or forgotten, the great silence and the way it is issued:
pale yellow, white. Shh. Come closer. There are six petals. We may call
it tulip but we’ve been wrong before. Here is where the wonder begins, that
mysterious bulb that blossoms into worship. Watch. There is a second, a
study of intent. I burn, it says, but I will burn only this far. It is a
single portion of flower that could quench the multitudes soaked the way it
is in sunset, sunrise, an altar for the beginning and end of our days. Each
of its six petals could shelter a winter, roof a houseful of lovers ripened
with longing. Beneath our feet, we’d call these petals home. And the
third, the third is master in the study of patience. Three petals surround
three petals, its centre a mystery we peer into like the future. Some of us
are dismayed at how closed it remains. Some of us have begun to ignore it
and exclaim over the other two flowers. And as the first tulip lets loose a
petal, the second begins to burn wider. And so we begin to tell time in
this way. Eternity to the third flower who is slow but in its slowness will
lean into the space where there were once two others. Here it will sip
quiet memory and bloom finally, a purple solace.
