by Wendy Drexler, from the chapbook Refuge:

Catalpa

Spilt from my source, I wand up. How many lives
have I had, the clouds for hours shuttling over me?

Contemplating the blue midriff of sky, day after day,
only half remembering the timeliness of rain and wind,
as if I’ve lived in the shade of one country,
the sun of another. Years have fluttered by as I
sipped from the pond. The decades I ate the sun.
                                                                    Of what use

has it been to take every moon inside my skin,
and where could I have hidden unless I’d grown
as far away from home as the math would allow
to harvest a small kingdom in darkness,
disappearing part of myself inside myself?

What remains—all that you can see of me—I spread
before you, teeming and magnanimous. See how
I invite every passing swallowtail to sip from my mouth.

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