Papaver somniferum
Such a simple flower, so striking. A bright face that speaks fluently of late springtime warmth, but has the wherewithal to stand up to many climes. She’s cheerful, a splash of color on a lady’s handbag or a little child’s dress, the onomatopoeia of her English name effervescent on the tongue. The sort of bloom that paramours gather in bunches, the hue reflected on blushing skin.
Yet there’s something more at the center that makes her stand apart. A contrast, a depth. Sometimes no more than a pinpoint, sometimes the size of a thumbnail. It’s glossed over, but never forgotten. A genuine heart of darkness, on the surface for all the world to see.
She walks the world in a haze of duality. And what other small wonder has inspired such devotion? The fair rose in her many guises has but one small danger, easily avoided and easily cast aside for a velvet touch and heady perfume. The gentle lotus inspires thoughts of balance and eternity, but prefers to be known best by those in the East, and travels little.
Not this passionate damsel. Across the ages, across continents, the wise and beguiled tell first of her beauty, and then of her gift of somnolence and euphoria. In more modern times, her likeness calls remembrance to mind, replicas pinned to a lapel to honor those put to sleep through war. Irony, then, knows no bounds, for the sleep she bestows should be far more peaceful - and in the lands where she ensures their memory, her crimson petals flow across the countrysides like the blood spilled in their struggles.
Only time knows who first discovered her gift, who then exploited it. What a singular treasure it would have been if not for human nature. Had it simply been purified, refined, employed only for healing, as it was when the wise old women put it to use.
Man has never been built for restraint. Were she applied only to soften the pain of a cut, to bring rest that would bring mending...how different the world would be. How much safer. Still today, there are those who work with her thus, where her ease and comfort are given in small doses, judiciously, and only until no longer needed.
But put into man’s harsher service, she is bled of her gentleness and cries tears of despair. She loses her sweetness and is stripped bare, horribly strengthened to the essence of an essence - and then, there are those who are in her service. Potions and powders and pipes are filled with this lie of a beautiful sleep, drawing men and women into a vice-like embrace until the world outside her arms is unbearable. Or perhaps it was unbearable before. Yet all told, they simply cannot be without her - even if they know they may one day cease to be, altogether, with her.
Even made stronger, she alone is insufficient to cause a downfall. But her attraction, her pull is such that her servants will go to any means to stay with her, and her masters will go to any means to take more from them as they do. Her heart of darkness is a different world, one filled with painful longing and even more painful reunions, long roads down and even longer ones back up. Sicknesses ensue - of the mind, of the body - then down they fall, battered, bruised, broken. Some survive, some escape; far too many do not.
Her danger is a false beauty, a terrible one. Such beauty deserves truth, the truth of red blooms waving among clover, the truth that there are those who give themselves to preserve lives, the truth that she is better clutched in hand as a gentle posy than as an angry dragon.
And then again, perhaps her beauty is more than that. A fairy tale, a cautionary tale, a tale of days gone by. Perhaps her presence in this world is fully balanced, yin and yang, creation and destruction. For her story is life itself - its brightness and its darkness, its array of possibilities. Perhaps in her face, we might find the answers to all we seek.
...no. Keep her at arm’s length; keep her in memory. Be enchanted without being lured. Gaze upon her in the red fields - and then turn away, through blue sky and green grass, to see the beauty within yourself.
Yet there’s something more at the center that makes her stand apart. A contrast, a depth. Sometimes no more than a pinpoint, sometimes the size of a thumbnail. It’s glossed over, but never forgotten. A genuine heart of darkness, on the surface for all the world to see.
She walks the world in a haze of duality. And what other small wonder has inspired such devotion? The fair rose in her many guises has but one small danger, easily avoided and easily cast aside for a velvet touch and heady perfume. The gentle lotus inspires thoughts of balance and eternity, but prefers to be known best by those in the East, and travels little.
Not this passionate damsel. Across the ages, across continents, the wise and beguiled tell first of her beauty, and then of her gift of somnolence and euphoria. In more modern times, her likeness calls remembrance to mind, replicas pinned to a lapel to honor those put to sleep through war. Irony, then, knows no bounds, for the sleep she bestows should be far more peaceful - and in the lands where she ensures their memory, her crimson petals flow across the countrysides like the blood spilled in their struggles.
Only time knows who first discovered her gift, who then exploited it. What a singular treasure it would have been if not for human nature. Had it simply been purified, refined, employed only for healing, as it was when the wise old women put it to use.
Man has never been built for restraint. Were she applied only to soften the pain of a cut, to bring rest that would bring mending...how different the world would be. How much safer. Still today, there are those who work with her thus, where her ease and comfort are given in small doses, judiciously, and only until no longer needed.
But put into man’s harsher service, she is bled of her gentleness and cries tears of despair. She loses her sweetness and is stripped bare, horribly strengthened to the essence of an essence - and then, there are those who are in her service. Potions and powders and pipes are filled with this lie of a beautiful sleep, drawing men and women into a vice-like embrace until the world outside her arms is unbearable. Or perhaps it was unbearable before. Yet all told, they simply cannot be without her - even if they know they may one day cease to be, altogether, with her.
Even made stronger, she alone is insufficient to cause a downfall. But her attraction, her pull is such that her servants will go to any means to stay with her, and her masters will go to any means to take more from them as they do. Her heart of darkness is a different world, one filled with painful longing and even more painful reunions, long roads down and even longer ones back up. Sicknesses ensue - of the mind, of the body - then down they fall, battered, bruised, broken. Some survive, some escape; far too many do not.
Her danger is a false beauty, a terrible one. Such beauty deserves truth, the truth of red blooms waving among clover, the truth that there are those who give themselves to preserve lives, the truth that she is better clutched in hand as a gentle posy than as an angry dragon.
And then again, perhaps her beauty is more than that. A fairy tale, a cautionary tale, a tale of days gone by. Perhaps her presence in this world is fully balanced, yin and yang, creation and destruction. For her story is life itself - its brightness and its darkness, its array of possibilities. Perhaps in her face, we might find the answers to all we seek.
...no. Keep her at arm’s length; keep her in memory. Be enchanted without being lured. Gaze upon her in the red fields - and then turn away, through blue sky and green grass, to see the beauty within yourself.