Chestnut Review: Semper Augustus

First published in Autumn 2022, Volume 4, Number 2 of Chestnut Review.

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?

For the past 15 years I’ve worked closely with flowers as a florist. Naturally, I’m interested in their layered histories as symbols, talismans, medicines, and ornaments. Flowers are attendant to the touchstones of human experience: birth, death, matrimony, celebrations, and intimate coded exchanges. The Dutch tulip mania of the 17th century represents a typical market bubble in some ways. I’m fascinated with the ways it does not. Tulips have no overtly practical purpose and are valued solely for their beauty—bulbs whose blooms last approximately 10 days. Ephemeral beauty is a well-worn, romantic trope, but how does it function as currency? Is it reasonable to bet on next year’s blooms? Is an economy of adornment possible? The most valuable coin on the Dutch market was the Semper Augustus, a striped breed born of a virus, known as a “broken” tulip. Are the broken among us exalted?