YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, APRIL 2011
METAMORPHOSISIt is astounding how little the ordinary person notices butterflies.-NabokovWe dredge the stream with soup strainersand separate dragonfly and damselfly nymphs—their eyes like inky bulbs, jaws snappingat the light as if the world was full oftiny traps, each hairpin mechanismtripped for transformation. Such a ricochetof appetites insisting life, life, life againstthe watery dark, the tuberous reeds. Tell me—how do they survive passage? I rinse our cutleryin the stream. Heat so heavy it hurts the skin.The drone of wild bees. We swim through citiesburied in seawater, we watch the gods decay.We dredge the gods of other civilizations.The sun, for example. Before the deity became astar. Jasper scarabs excavated from the hearts of kings. Daylight’s blue-green water pooling at thefoot of falls. Sandstones where the canyon spillsits ...
