A broken tulip

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grow thickly, starry upstarts clustered
around perennial bushes which slowly add
green to green, piece by piece
like old men carefully rising
while the starry-eyed clouds of blue children
swarm their creaking knees.

Each tiny flower makes a star,
and each petal – said the Greeks –
makes a mouse ear. “Myosotis”
they named the plant.
It all depends on perspective.

Those prone to ingest poisonous plants
call it “Scorpion Grass”, a warning.

Lore and legend wonders further
claims that as the Creator wandered in Eden
he asked the shy blue flower
its name. Embarrassed
the flower replied it had forgotten—
and so God named it, “forget-me-not”
saying he would always remember.

Gardeners like my Grandma
who struggle to contain its wild springtime growth
may well ask if “forget-me-not” is a wry wink.

Once, a treasure hunter dropped
the little blue flower into a cave
which never again opened up
to reveal its gold to him.
Forget me not.

Lovers appropriate the flower
as lovers always will – bending the very cosmos
into a gift for the other. The oldest tale
takes place on the banks of the Danube,
where a young man plunges into the swift river
to pick the little blue flowers from an island
and tosses them to his love as the water
carries him away, “forget me not!”
She wore them in her hair until her own dying day.

Do you understand yet the riddle
of naming? How a sweet blue flower
betrays the passions, avarices, incaution, imagination
of each teller?
I like best the Garden of Eden tale,
because it allows the flower to speak.
Maybe, remembering the voice of God,
the little starry blue faces swirl their damp, Spingtime circles
through our gardens and forests in blissful dismissal
of all that we humans load it with.
And you, reader. What is your name?
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