Sampling | Ingrid Andersson

Phalaenopsis

Moth

is what an apostle

of Linnaeus named it.

But at this kitchen table

in this liminal hour, I am tired

of men's takes on nature.

And Linnaeus, old spy

in your hothouse of flowers

you might have reconsidered

this tendrilled upended genus

the profane yet prayerful

shape of it, if

just before dawn

you knelt, as midwives

and lovers do

before the rising body

of a woman, her

epiphytic mind, her

singular surging

muscle, the spreading

suspense of

her hips, haloes

around tendrilled lips

radiating: promise.

Nova Stella

for Lailah

Out of the blue lull

that can befall hard labor,

bestowing sleep

I could tell that she was fully dilated

and pronounced her complete.

Whereupon she roused,

turned completely dilated eyes on me

and said with a glowing depth

and more love than I have ever seen:

No one ever told me that before

and in a blinding flash and burst

of milky caul, her arms reached

down and caught

a daughter!

The Way Art Lives

I see the small lives lost

in the making of your

voluminous silk scarf

smooth and soft

as newborn skin.

Its spun protein fibers

as resilient

and fine as hair.

It holds you

the way a cocoon

holds metamorphosis,

the way the pia mater

holds memory,

the way the amnion

in your loomed

womb held your

spinning son.

Swedish pancakes

should be tawny gold in color, gleaming with the fat

of whole milk from brown cows with calves in pasture and yolks like suns from farmyard hens;

should be soft as satin yet latticed around the edges

from batter poured into a satisfied skillet

riding tides of butter to caramel rims;

are richest made from colostrum, first sweet milk

at calving time, when everybody on the farm

rides tides of common good.

Out among the grass and thistles

cows graze between the rune stones raised

to honor noble deeds, making milk.

Even the white chickens upon whom

so much depends, embody importance and

dwarf my laying of vowels, consonants,

the daily churnings of a scavenging mind.

As if feeding a hunger that can't be controlled

I toil every waking hour and even in sleep

to crack the mystery of how gravel in a crop

can grind grain, grubs, insects, dust

into something noble and whole.