SAFFRON (Crocus Sativa)

From the ancient gods
I flourish
My truth and exactitude
Factual and ungarbled
And was always viewed
As communicating colour
And a heady trail of scent
A real reliability
My sincerity was spent

Soaking up the sun
My planet so to say
My gender it was Masculine
and fire, along the way
My deities were Eos
And Astoreth my power
From a ancient Semitic goddess
One of fertility and our
Stigma threads are collected
And dried and favoured for
A seasoning and a colouring
That the finest do adore

Many many moons ago
A crocus loved a Nymph he knew
She lived near Athens
Her name was “Smilax”
It’s said she was, sweet on him too
It was infatuation
apparently and she
Went off of him she just got bored
But for him expressly
He loved her really badly
He couldn’t let her go
And in his melancholia
His sadness it did show

The gods were clearly
Upset of his unrequited love
And turned him into a beautiful flower
From heaven up above
For her she became the bindweed
The thorny aggravation
Indicative that Crocus
Had been rejected, his salvation
Primarily a source of beauty
An Aroma of the gods
For her the puny bindweed
Left to rot in clods

That was the ancient story
And there are others I know
But the strange thing is
That bindweed over centuries
Did glow
With pretty bells of pink and white
And though are often thrown
He became the saffron Crocus
As most of you have known

The stigmas became the saffron
Dried and essentially pure
Positive and assertive
and have become a lure
For gourmets really everywhere
And for magicians too
Who realise that psychic powers
Are generated through
The blush the flush the hectic glow
The consciousness the sense
The most persuasive perfume
It’s profiling as dense
As any and it’s vigour
And it’s curiosity
ResplendentLy attired in light
And reciprocity

It’s often used in healing spells
And has a ritual role
It’s does dispel great sadness
And thus it charms the soul
Lizards are put off by it
The smell it makes them sick
And so they stay away
It just gets on their wick

It’s probably now the most expensive
Herb in all the world
Delicately balanced
And many chefs have hurled
Pinches into dishes
And smelled the glorious scent
That’s wafts into their noses
And just makes them content

Drinking saffron water
It’s said gives you the sight
Of what the present future holds
The cerebration light
Such sensory perception
Must be a souls delight
Cleopatra swore by it
Her bath water it sang
With all the joys of heavenly gods
And the ardour from the tang

In India with Sandalwood
It cools the aching brow
Engrossed in it the Poet
Is mindful as to how
The many words are searched for
And found painstakingly
Alert and watchful to the sense
And credibility

The fact is Crocus Has become
Quite the tortured soul
Pulled about by many hands
AlL out of his control
The stigma’s ripped away from him
The reasoning unsure
Laterally still curious
Why more and more and more

Are seemingly now growing
Almost everywhere
As is of course the Bindweed
That Gardeners’ do share
Their anger and bewilderment
With why smilax still should be
Always climbing up their favourite
Plants or sapling tree.