– after “The Life Ecstatic” (2016) by Judith Schaechter
Tied to this field and rising, cocooned
in the blue of your own body’s binding.
Do you hear the larval teeth, the patient
scallops they draw around each leaf?
All is flush and overwhelming: scents
you never could possess in your one-
chambered belly, your partitioned
heart. But the only possible answer
tremors all the way across your ribs’
marimba. Its echo lodges in your throat,
though you will hold out until the last.
Isn’t that why all the speckled flowers
curve like spoons toward your mouth,
why they petal you in light that touches
without form, without shape,
without moon or weight?