Inflection
We drew the breaths
of butterflies in high June,
beings never still
whose feet are small
as whimpers in our sleep,
light as the gauze of
a first-hour dream
until it falls,
a blood-splashing guillotine.
Butterflies
know nothing of blood
except the blood of flowers and that
is what we sipped, flitting from one to
the next because life must
spread or be stilled;
we never thought we
could ever be stilled
for we had no thoughts,
so new, so insubstantial
and ingenuous were we, certainly
not one that whispered
"Here is the starry inflection of
Love's extinction event," as we deep-
drank our liquor from the meadows
drying beneath us, even as the vapor
of your breath closing to me
dried on my lips
in a sigh, tenuous and bright
as wind-floated pollen,
your mouth soon withdrawn
to suckle the next flower's mouth
until flowers and memory and all their savor
too were gone.
August 2023
posted for Tipped at
Images: Untitled(Landscape With Butterflies) 1956 ©Salvador Dali
Butterflies ©Odilon Redon
The breath of butterflies....what a tender and gossamer thing! The other's breath drying on your lips is such a powerful image, Hedge. The beauty of this poem lifts my heart - the butterflies, going from flower to flower, in counterpoint to the earth drying beneath us, hits home. I am struck every day with the dichotomy of seeing the beauty around me, yet knowing the climate is in such peril. A tenuous thing, trying to stay balanced.
ReplyDeleteYes, lilting and delicate and sweet but perilous too, this gathering of dew which is "the starry inflection of / Love's extinction event." At the lips breath rises and falls, and the inflection point is where those paths invert; and so a kiss is both most present and absent, a flittering of dreamy gossamer "until it falls, / a blood-splashing guillotine. How we sigh to die there. Affection and affliction rounded by infection and resurrection: it's nature's way of telling us we are bound, most moist in memory. Lovely notes of Stevens dapple the ponder here Hedge, in all a bittersweet delight. Crazy from the heat perhaps but just as meant.
ReplyDeleteThis is beautifully heartbreaking. An animist dream of death and the sense that perhaps the flowers will come again on that wind borne pollen and maybe with them the butterflies too.
ReplyDeleteThis is so tender and merciless at the same time. It is difficult for me to scroll back to find special lines but there was one about things both being finite (you put it much more elegantly) that I particularly loved. So wistful but also wise. —Shay
ReplyDeleteSuch beautiful writing but so sad too. You capture the strangeness of these times well. We are flitting between realities - the natural world can be so exquisite yet underlying that is a terrible sense of doom. - Suzanne
ReplyDeleteHai. Ai am back.
ReplyDeleteQuite a gut punch of a poem exquisitely executed. The weird warping of the dreamscape and reality - the unconcious deep-drinking our liquor from the meadows
ReplyDeletedrying beneath us - and the images all so beautiful and lulling and innocuous.
Will definitely revisit. (in case I have misread it completely)
This is so good. “ We drew the breaths of butterflies” and throughout the poem you bring the smallness and lightness of that being in contrast with blood and extinction. You created the balance necessary for flight.
ReplyDeletea fine suite of pens, Joy. i am sorry that I have few words anymore, but know that I appreciate the sweep and depth, the sorrow and wistfulness, as I read and re-read them ~ M
ReplyDeleteJust glad to know you are still out there, M. And I deeply appreciate you reading. I have few words myself any more--I've come to feel that for me it's an interior drought that reflects the larger one in our society, and on our planet. But maybe its just me. ;) Hope all is well with you, old friend.
DeleteNot just you... My quarterly checkup reveals no changes to the cancer the last 3, so that's good - watchful waiting continues - I'm afraid I'll live :). How to entice that fickle muse to return, now that's the question. ~
DeleteIf you find out, let me know. Good to know you're hanging in there. Life may be a bitch, but the alternative is a bigger one. ;)
ReplyDeleteSo many beautiful lines in this, and I love how you go from being light and airy to dark and bloody in one fell swoop. My favourite lines:
ReplyDelete"whose feet are small
as whimpers in our sleep,
light as the gauze of
a first-hour dream"
"Here is the starry inflection of
Love's extinction event"
<3