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your mouth soon withdrawn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
