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.