The origin of "chrysalis" is "gold" --
so etymology is beautiful,
and entomology, as well, unfolds
exquisite wings. Creation's bountiful

in connotations, natural poetry
and little jokes we find like Easter eggs
in ordinary speech. Bathymetry
of language or the living cosmos begs

Attention, but, distracted, we ignore
Incalculable depths so we can speak.
There are no simple words. They're only more
or less compact. Just think what we could wreak --

A "nymph," from "veiled" and "bud" and "bride"
is only insubstantial from outside.

Come, be my lover in the garden, dear --
And let sophisticated orchids leer,
and let the virgin violets shield their eyes
And let sunflowers toss their manes and roar
Indifference. Barbaric dragonflies
Mate cartwheeling in flight; the slugs adore
Each other in a dangling embrace.
Let’s not speak of the butterflies, who face
Apart, but otherwise let’s be like low
And crawling things. So, apple blossom-fed
And honeysuckle-drunk, we will forego
Formalities. Among dead leaves, we’ll shed
Our rattling skins. The fingers of the grass
Will tattoo secret music on our backs.

I leave you with my hair and thoughts as fierce
in disarray as dandelion seeds.
And who would think those windblown wisps could pierce
the ground, come spring, like my impatient needs
will do? Tell me how I can comfort you --
what do the dandelions tell the wind?
You scatter me so easily -- I flew
before your touch. Now I cannot begin
To root myself – the dying earth forbids
intrusions of that kind, so I am still
at wing. I'd spin us both a chrysalis
against the coming cold -- but how then will
we two emerge? We'll breathe the shocking air --
and scatter snake-green sproutlings everywhere.

For Emma Bovary


I used to think it was your tragedy
to choose an ugly means of suicide.
I've reconsidered since. That irony
is less important than it seems. You died

(though all unknowingly) defiantly;
you were magnificent in agony.
You took your beauty back into yourself,
and swallowed it like arsenic. What wealth

you left your pretty daughter, when you seized
yourself from their astonished hands, released
your body from their hungry gorging gaze --
your last act was to force their eyes away.

How odd to think that you'd be horrified
to see subversion in your suicide.

Ophelia was tougher than you thought -

I would imagine, at the end, she fought

herself; the urge to breathe is powerful.

The willow helped; I'm sure those terrible

arthritic fingers in her drunken dress

gave more authority to the command

to drown. But then, she pressed her slender hand

against the glassy surface. She transgressed.

For this audacity, they buried her

without a requiem -- let them inter

an empty fair and unpolluted shape

for virgin violet food, so she escaped --

So all my sisters' mad despairs are mine;

pills tangle in my arms like willow vines.

Those flowers, straining at their branchlets in the wind
that bent the slender trunk of our young crabapple
Reminded me of dying moths that flutter, pinned
alive, displayed as though they could be beautiful

Preserved and still -- not yet; but in their agony
if only they'd the leverage, they would tear through
their small dark bodies, they would fall breathlessly,
they would stray softly to the ground as petals do.

I watched them, and I thought how it would be to burst
ahead, and leave my moth-dust on your fingertips.
I thought I was alone, and so inclined perverse --
I thought of flight, and mapped the rivers of my wrists.

And you stood strained and strangely silent, watching me
until the moths turned back to flowers on the tree.

I write unseasonable rhyme for you.

The time for poetry is when the figs

Are falling-ripe; and arch the supple twigs
Like lovers' backs. But even if I grew
Around you, vine-like, I'd not blossom now
Or in a hundred years; I am so young,
And others' words trip strangely on my tongue,
And I revolt against their fusty vows.
As foolish children of the modern age,
We are too wise and cynical to – but
I will avoid the word; I cannot gauge
Its usefulness as yet. But here is what
Impels my rhyme: though wise, I still remember
Your foolish gift -- primroses in December.

The Poet Reconciles Her Two Worlds

When asked why I believe I say (well first
I mark my battered Origin) but then:
Consider anglerfish, that most perverse
Of finned and swimming mouths (or one of them).
It is no proof, or not in formal sense
And yet those cave-like bear-trap maws that gape
Like evil shipwrecks or a graveyard fence
Are in their way divine -- or how they mate!
The ladies with their harems on their backs,
The tiny gentlemen reduced to sacks
Of clinging parasitic sperm, or how
That deadly dinner-bell hangs from her brow!
For all the world's uncertain, we have this:
If God can make a joke, then God exists.

Let me pour drops of myself out to you --
But so: the trembling-insubstantial dew
Leaves ghosts upon the grass. We two will grow
Together like the jagged teeth of caves
In concentrated, ore-dense beads and slow
Relentless rhythms. Once, the dead gods gave
Their blessing to the linden and the oak
Who stand with winter-budding limbs entwined --
And so we will be ancient, by and by.
We will be monuments. We will evoke
A rippling stillness in the mortal things
Who will, beside our reaching arms, stand small,
And we will flood the air with echoing
Of salt-rich heavy droplets as they fall.

I wish I'd been the first to write the rose
Though I could not have given it to you;
I am the one with thorns. And I suppose
That years of imitation wear the truth
From metaphors, although the flattery
Is nice. They'd compost the original.
So will you be an oak? My botany
is half-remembered, but as I recall,
An oak has a solemnity and age
That is not yours, and then there are the roots.
You are more wonderful and far more strange --
I don't think I will find a plant to suit.
How would you like to be an octopus?
So unbotanical! Unobvious!


In Reply to the One to Whom I Last Wrote Poetry, Who Was Not Satisfied

If you would be a flower, be my artichoke.
You could be so delicious dipped in olive oil
Like a green Greek wrestler – but now I think I spoke
Too soon, betrayed myself – don't let this blunder spoil
Our courtship. I woo as well as Cyrano
And patient as Penelope – I must be so.
For you I'll be a poet: soft, persuading, slow
So when at last I peel your steaming leaves – but no –
Though not for you that haughty coldness of the rose
Whom you resemble in your dense complexity
Though you are earthily delectable and those
Small spines are no dissuasion, my carnality
Is premature. This is the wooer's art
To make you steam, and then to win your heart.

My love for you should not be poetry,

nor budding rose nor sunset nor

another usual aesthetic metaphor.

I’ve tried on every tired simile

I found, like ugly hats. What’s more,

for just how long can you sit still and watch

(and I mean really watch) the sun descend

as stars appear like needles through a swatch

of dusk? After all, you know how the rose

and sunset end:

with clarity,
with curling clouds and petals, drifting prose --

But if my love for you were gravity!

I nurture thoughts of suicide like cuckoo chicks

in warblers' nests; I read last night about the tricks

the cuckoo plays on stupid mother birds:

she leaves her offspring in the other nest

to kill its foster-siblings and protest

its shrilling hunger to its nurse; absurd

and small beside the monstrous infant-thing,

she stuffs its gaping maw with dainty worms

and hairy caterpillars, which she brings

unceasingly. Bright twitching insects squirm

and cram its gut; she loves the parasite.

Her own chicks never feathered; their first flight

was falling, so their mother must deceive --

delude, beguile, blind herself or grieve.