Stigma & Style
$500 an ounce, gleaned from thousands
of flowers in hoop houses—the sticky
tangles, like miniature bundles
of mesquite, would hardly fill your palm,
& yet so many are willing to pay
that sum & more to ingest it.
This is St. Albans, Vermont,
& no meth lab's stockpile of acetone
& freon, no jars of crystalized iodine,
but a crop of Crocus sativus: six
paddle-shaped petals, striations
the color of... well, try to describe it
& you can only turn back
to botany's vast nomenclature:
lavender, lilac, & periwinkle,
violet crossed with mulberry.
The squat stamens are topped
by pollen-hooded anthers,
but more important: the female
style, ovary, & maroon stigmas,
the last of which is the source
of saffron. A new breeding ground
for this spice, & all because a native
Iranian-turned-Vermonter took note,
how New England's fall matched Iran's
finest saffron regions. The Cretan frescos
in the Palace of Knossos reveal
a saffron harvest, young girls & even
monkeys gathering blooms, the gentle
plucking of the stigmas, all supervised
by a seated goddess looking down
on the scene with platter wide eyes
until the settlement was rocked
first by an earthquake then
by an eruption that covered
the frescos in volcanic dust.
How the stamens toil not but spin
in the Vermont wind. How we angle
to glean all the flavor we can before
our mouths are filled with ash.
Stephen Cramer’s first book of poems, Shiva’s Drum, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by University of Illinois Press. Read more.