1

Alchemical vessels

imbued with rumours of colour –

a pearly acorn-brown,

tinctures of amber, buff-white:
the Trickster, light,

mixing it up, sheathing

each sculpted bloom in

the glow of other objects;
even the innermost

whorl, the nectary,

endowed with

moody brilliance.


4

A time-lapse camera

would show these flowers

in violent metamorphosis:
tarry with darkness,

slicked by ivory moonlight,

dawn’s lava-red –
always in transit, becoming…

always, even when knifed by sun glare,

sealed, silent.


5

Seeded in fire,

amaryllis, iris, orchid –
sleek-skinned botanical studies 
as vacant as living flowers are lush,

as brittle as living flowers are yielding.
Hothouse simulcra,

they lean towards windows
blank with rain;

bronze with day’s last embers.


8

The exquisite can be so cold.
But these sprays,

their silvery leaf-wings poised,
express a sunflower-yearning:

rearing up, opening out,
as is the way of plant life

and of human desire –
so outright;

heroic, in a way
and, in the end, unanswerable.


Notes:

In response to paintings from Dena Kahan’s Glass Garden series.

They are based on The Glass Flowers exhibit at Harvard Museum of Natural

History, which displays botanical studies made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka

from 1887 through 1936.