ORCHID

1 5 1 R O R C H I D G R A C E S C H U L M A N Not raised but found, this dancer, idling on trash, abandoned in the compactor room, fated to be smothered in a green bag, seven blooms caught me, hot pink smiles in deadpan weather, on the year’s shortest day before the longest night. Gingerly, sponging o√ ashes, eggshells, silvery powder (talc, I hope), from its mossy planter, I slide it toward high windows, and it changes like fire: sherry to red-purple to magenta, colors of blood, of beaujolais, of sin and holiness, of saints on stained-glass panels, light shining through, a diva’s fan. Fuchsia, the color named for a plant that must have jolted Leonhart Fuchs, the botanist, when he discovered it in the 16th century, my orchid’s serious name is phalaenopsis, for moths in flight. Its wingy blooms blink, teasing, just out of eye’s reach. Sunsets they turn the color of red ochre mixed with manganese, powdered and blown through reeds by the early cave painters, fearful of beasts, to glitter from a bison’s frame; 1 5 2 Y I don’t know the exact shade of red-purple the Phoenicians used to dye robes for kings, but I think this was it, also the color of a rose Yeats set afire to see its ghost. In my mind the ancient Egyptian who painted amulets inside a royal tomb wished only for this sizzling fuchsia to wake the beloved dead, as he mixed gypsum with rose madder in futile passion. Once as a child I wandered in the park bordering my usual asphalt streets, and saw a flower, red-purple on a stem with wings. I called to it, my angel. Now I give an orchid air and water, turn down the lumière, stroke the crooked stem that darts out to reveal wings whose vermilion, burning against a window facing brick, defies endings on this cold year’s end. ...