Tulips bloom beneath the moon

Teresa's bulk tulip bulb purchases last fall are sending up spiky green shoots; flowers soon to appear.  To much laughter I quoted her a tulip poem written by Melissa and me in high school.  We were intrigued by a humungous variety growing at our school, to the point of surreptitiously snipping a few here and there for art projects.  We tried to capture the creamy beauty of those massive petals by dipping them in wax.  That didn't work so we picked more and coated them in plaster.  That technique held more promise but the tulip season was over for another year.  So we wrote a poem.   

Raindrops fall within the hall
And echo in the thunderous din
Passion sweet
As our lips meet
While tulips bloom beneath the moon
And cast a silver glow
Nature's flower, with every hour
Slowly drifts in its own power
To the silent place where flowers tower


Ah, so deep!  So we liked to think.  This was a also a bow to the imagery of Amy Lowell in

"The Garden by Moonlight"

A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,   
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish   
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.   
Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,   
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.


I draw on the flowers mentioned in this poem when I'm planning a scent garden.  Phlox, phlox, must find phlox.





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