Purchase
I bought two “ruched cotton,
laced and cheeky”
four-packs of my favorite panties
so I guess I am feeling hopeful
about my upcoming
heart surgery.
I love how the vertical ruching line
follows the curve of my crack
in luxurious vanilla tulle lace
with dandelion-dragonfly design,
as if below my waist
were a meadow
with no hint
on the delicate cotton of roots and dirt,
an afterlife or frightening underworld.
The panties arrived by mail,
flat and overlapping on blue
cardboard like four open-winged birds
on a rectangle of sky.
After the surgery is done, I’ll
untie my hospital gown
and slip on the pair of purple ones
before heading back home in our car
with my husband to feed the dog.
* * * * *
Dragonfly
The dragonfly can see each quiver of hesitation
in the gnat’s brown body before it chooses where to land
on a tongue-petal of tiger lily or a pink lady’s slipper
while a human will only detect a long blur of gnat in the air.
The dragonfly can see three hundred frames per second
compared to the human’s sixty — what if I could see you through
the iridescent blue of the dragonfly’s compound eyes whose surface
appears like finely jeweled mesh — look more closely at the language
of your petal-tongue — through the dragonfly, see with the human
equivalent of slow motion, watch as tip of tongue presses,
for a moment, the inner walls of your teeth
as though regaining balance there, another form
of silence in the dark of your mouth, another
deliberate beauty I might have failed to understand.