What Tulips Know

a writing prompt for you

Welcome to Writing in Company. Each week I share some words and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points for you to write about what matters. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft thoughts for your own writing project, as meditation or prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. You can always look back through the archive for more ideas. Grab your pen and paper, and let your words loose on the page.

Last week, in preparation for setting an Easter table, I ended up in a field of blooming pick-your-own tulips. Is there a better place to be in the spring? Long rows of color, laid out like a quilt. Huge yellow blooms. Ruffly pink blooms. Dainty dusky purple blooms. And every now and then an errant color where it shouldn’t be: one red bloom in the middle of white, or an orange striated bloom standing proudly with the pinks.

photo credit to my spouse

I’ve written before about what tulips have taught me, and about the blooming garden where our son’s ashes are, which offers a glorious spring tulip show every year. I preached Easter sunrise sermons there before I really knew what loss and grief meant. Before I learned about hope and how there can be new life on the other side of death. Now, no matter where we move, some part of my Easter heart is oriented toward those beds. And some question inside me—that I can’t even articulate—is answered by tulips.

Even as they drop their petals, they keep showing off.

Here’s a poem that says something about what tulips know. Also old women and dogs. It begins the collection The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog, by Alicia Ostriker, a whole series of poems in triptych form, voiced by the three characters.¹

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
—by Alicia Ostriker

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other
dogs can smell it

a writing prompt

Let’s take a cue from Ostriker’s form, and choose three voices like she does:

• One person of a specific age.

• One object from nature.

• One animal.

Then write a three-part blessing like she does, beginning with the line:

“To be blessed, said the….is to…”

What will you learn about blessing as you listen to your three voices?

a bonus poem

Here’s another from Ostriker’s collection. Enjoy!

Awakening
—by Alicia Ostriker

It can take a lifetime
says the old woman

It can take a single deep kiss
says the tulip

Time to take a nap
says the dog

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previous post about tulips from the archives

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1. You can hear the poet Alicia Ostriker read this poem (and several others) in a Facebook video shared by Poetry is Bread, here.