Protologue
A poem for Magnolia
Eloxochitl (Nahuatl)/ Tsuhyűnsti (Cherokee)/ Katlaha (Choctaw)/ Yùlán/Mùlán (Chinese)/ Mokuren/Kobushi (Japanese)/ Talauma (Kalinago)/ Magnolia (French/English)
Petals laid like funeral silk
over a scaffold of older intent,
not quite wood or bone
but something that remembers both
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
They do not answer the storm
They outlast the question
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Their sap keeps a record
written before sweetness had a name,
before the bright buzzing of the bees
When the air pressed close and heavy,
and the earth rehearsed itself in slower forms
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
They opened anyway
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Not for song, not for light
But for small armored witnesses
the patient insistence of beetles
Dragging through the silt of pollen and heat
while these elders held their ground
against the slow grinding of plates
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
This is how it began
Not beauty, but endurance
Mistaken for an offering
Strength born of survival
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
They were ancient in a young world,
rooted in the seams where deep time folds
practicing the long arithmetic of remaining
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Now they bloom like a secret they have agreed to keep
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Call it a private joke
this softness they put on
That hides their truth on their own terms
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
They have watched continents loosen
felt the sky revise its color,
stood through the waves of ash
Extinction passed by more than once
and did not think to take them
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
So they flower
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Pale, fragrant, almost excessive
As if daring the present to misunderstand
As if daring us to believe
this is fragility
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
But the petals are only the surface
of a much older decision
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
To persist so completely
it begins to resemble mercy
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
And still they stand
unstartled, unhurried
keeping their counsel
· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
While the rest of the world
tries, again
to become new
Magnolias have always been special to me, but I only recently learned that their fossils pre-date bees and go all the way back to the Cretaceous period. My mind was blown, and what started as a tanka formed into this instead. 𝙹𝚘 𝚂𝚎𝚡𝚝𝚘𝚗’s April prompt ‘courage to bloom’ was also on my mind as I wrote this piece. I included only a few Indigenous names for magnolia in random order at the top. The list is in no way exhaustive. And if you are interested, here is a quick article from the Smithsonian about the long history of magnolias.
Thanks for being here.
Until next time,
j
I love how you’ve taken something so outwardly delicate and turned it, gently but unmistakably, into a monument to endurance. Those lines about “not beauty, but endurance” and “a much older decision” kept echoing for me—they shift the whole emotional gravity of the piece. It’s not about petals at all in the end, but about time… about what it means to remain when everything else keeps rewriting itself.
There’s also something deeply respectful in the way you’ve named it at the beginning—like you’re letting the magnolia exist in many tongues at once, refusing to pin it down to a single story. It gives the poem this quiet, expansive rootedness.
And that closing feeling… that the bloom is almost a kind of misdirection, a softness worn on purpose—it’s so striking. It made me reconsider every magnolia I’ve ever seen, like they’re in on something ancient and patient that we’re only just beginning to notice.
It stayed with me as a kind of calm, steady pulse. Not loud, not showy—just certain in its knowing. 🌸
This is absolutely gorgeous. A beautiful take on my prompt. Thank you so much for writing for it. 🖤🌙