WHY ARMS IF NOT FOR REACHING
Someone is barbecuing & the smell gets everywhere.
Smoke carries: we are hungry.
Deep in my dark it is safe to admit
I’m better stranded
inside my own thoughts,
a field unknowing
itself, I follow forever, happy as a
door opening only
onto more doors.
A self is weeping
in the tree behind the art building. Other selves
frolic in the high grass, then fuck. They spread out like butterflies,
a slow explosion of softening colors—a future
there, another, another—
the viceroy monarch painting
the field with movement.
Perched on a fence is a mother—moth-grey, anonymous.
I barely notice the frenzied beating
of the Spicebush Swallowtail, its black silk,
its turquoise tips,
until it alights atop my ankle.
Rests in plain view. I know
to reach for it is to lose it.
All around me the world hums its lush song.
It is summer. I hold still
as a blade of grass.
This poem originally published by Pom Pom. Cover photograph by Darla Mottram.