Orchis
Opens the Book
of
animal castration.
She
knows it's not about pain,
rather
convenience and ancient
practice:
diagrams of restraint
and
genitalia opposite
instruments
of sterility
curving
like saracen moons.
Crescent,
nascent-she doesn't
look
too closely. There's no blood
to
speak of and what's implied
has
little to do with husbandry.
The
denuded bellies and poor,
clipped
bulbs remind her
not
of absence, but tulips-
the
ones she rushed last fall
into
almost frozen ground.
Flags
of hope, it's been a long winter.
She
wants to watch each stalk
thrust
open, unfurling first
as
fringes then flaring, loudmouthed
cups
of bloom. Petals like hide,
she
will see them rise,
feel
the earth whinny and stomp. |
