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Her Head Is Full of Poems

Her Music Hastens on Painted Wings

Her Music Hastens On Painted Wing
In These Months of Change

What fuels the sap that surges through the stem?
A slender stalk connects the force right through
like the pole that impaled Frida Kahlo, made her

Every second pay attention, focused her outside
the body. Pain at your core — exquisite messenger —
runs, quivering flower, until Death earths you.

These months rehearse you then; the days before
the butterflies, a practice. You hold onto life,
a flailing babe fed by an umbilicus. Attached,

You’re a cocoon, only a wanna-be-butterfly,
the loamy dirt, the tendril and the root,
the rock and pebble, water, and the heat.

When done blooming and bleeding,
you fly with the wind before you land.
Metamorphosis plays for keeps.
If Butterflies Could Talk
Stone Butterflies

The flowers tunnel through the core
of spring this morning. Under sulfur
and the swirling heat, wet laughter

Touches every inch of what the wind
has carried here at such odd angles.
By nature, butterflies suck.

The iris open tendrils, and buttercups
slither over the serpentine, pour out
nectar. Delphiniums thrust sunward,

Crystal pollen vibrating soft spirits.
Our bodies have been good guests,
faithful seats of our surrender to

the delirious shapes of the wild,
cropped so close to the ground,
our faces tilted down, lined in glory.
Emergence

Under the dark body of
a small one— sudden splendor—

meets in the crowning, The new red
tips of wings, scalloped, diaphanous,
meander until— like a pit puckering

from a capacious peach— the push
’til the pinning— light under a leaf.
Pointed, resolve turn them so

the antennae extends, hooks probe
persist into the dry reaches of flight
— a golden ridge, a branch caught fire
Attachment

Dark strands connect these wings.
Married to flight, we hasten,
speed apart, and watch

The creatures around us die,
see all gentleness pass.
Who designed our union

Felt the pull of hemisphere,
stretched light over emptiness.
Whatever joins, in time,

Will rot, canker, cease. Until then,
this torso of delight weaves, with
loving flesh, our pinions each to each.
Apricots

Triangles drop from
the triple-eyed moth—
its tawny parchment
an attenuating lotus—
skeletal, tinged
sapphire savored
by nerves of light.

Behold the eyes of the sun—
antennae thrust into
a shell bone at rest atop
a creature of saffron
on petals of fire,
The wings fold up—
quick life, quick death.
Again

to Marjia Gimbütus
A Full Brief Light

I am the mountain.
I endure, sustain under
the throb of generation.

Through extinction’s darkening
thrust, my pulse beats steady, even.
I am the mountain.

I know death is not forever.
Each summer I adorn myself.
Sun yellow poppies, sticky monkey,

Rivers of pearly everlasting
Cascade down great thighs
of iris, wild cucumber, azaleas,

Just pink, ripple down my rich brown
curves. In the pleasure of my crevices,
elfin butterflies quiver.

My music hastens on painted wing.
I am the mountain. In my lengthening,
blue moths shudder, blossoms flutter,

Fading with the light, dying many times
before I take in my next breath. Red flickers
see for me, young hawks circle the sick,

Seize the flesh, feast fast like daylight vision.
Thus, my creatures come to me, solitary as
the bee, one by one, before all their descendants

Take flight.
After a Bone Scan

Quick bold strokes twist me round
— dizzy, bandaged, unprepared

to feel. While doctors seek the weakness
in my frame, I weave blinding

white cocoons to hide my thinning
cells. What can these apparitions say

to a being in a paper gown. Technicians stop
the swirls, seize upon an image of my bones.

What persists beyond this ghostly plate? Who
sees the song the body sings? Why, pinned down,

A moth on a cardboard tray, deconstructed to my
wings, do words arise to praise Gaia’s green Earth?
Butterfly Spirit

The pulse of blood,
oh, pomegranate heat,
flutter and the flood!

Fecundity rages sweet,
brief, baby,
soft honey —

seeded stem,
a tender feast —
the flower’s heart!
Mariposa Lilies

Every spring we butterflies — the
very pink sisters of the moon —
climb up Ring Mountain.

Sacred work, this migration, stumbling
in the mud running over the rivulets rising—
ample and rampant as milkmaids.

Our frail fingers fondle round buds, reddish
as breasts, caress one another—
petals, angular as sin. At the center,

Gold is threaded through.
Needles like ours thrive only in this soil.
Remember. No one else can ever fly for you.
Idolatry

Buried in black clay
a network of woe—
at its center a fist.

Tight buds
take flight
or imagine it.

As from a clump of beets,
the lofty one leads —
her veins, deep roots.

In an ampleness of grass,
the stalk’s sap
rises, thin fuel.

Her twin antennae
curl and nod. Breathing,
throbbing fibers

Bend and sway.
A flower’s eyes
see wanton curves.

The hills and valleys pulse,
and Sister Labrys sails,
sucks menace at her stem.

Inside a shell — her
blooming trapped —
ardor flaps and flails.

The rivers in the headlands
run dry before her will—
sheer idolatry of light

Trembling for release—
from the blossoms in her blood,
from the petals of her pain.
Butterfly Sanctuary

Who gives refuge to the poet
makes milkweed for a monarch —
on white pages dizzy shapes
spun of light.

Who offers shelter to the painter grows
yellow paper like a Budleia bush.
Mad green lines scrawl, arches of ink
tilt in the candlelight.

Such meadow makers open up a shrine.
Bristly brushes hover over words.
Pens sip soft deep veins of blue
until it’s time to lift their awful wings.