A Poem For Sunday

Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

Last week, the Poetry Society of America presented a reading by Kevin Simmonds and Ellen Bass at the very cool McNally Jackson bookstore in Soho as part of our ongoing series there. The poets are friends from San Francisco, and the reading had that radiant quality events do when the principles like and admire each other. In June, we featured poems from Kevin’s new book, Bend To It, so this week let’s take a turn with some of Ellen’s, from her marvelous new book Like a Beggar, published by Copper Canyon Press.

“Moth Orchids” by Ellen Bass:

If you are ill or can’t sleep, you can

watch them spread their wings—the hours

it might take for a baby to be born—

the furled sepals arching, until

the petals splay like a woman stretched, flung

open, blood blooming through her veins.

And then stillness, the white fans glisten

day after day like sunlit snow

tinged with a greeny kiss.

Intricate, curved labellum like bones

of a tiny pelvis and the slender tongue reaching out

to the air as though the parts of the body

could blend: mouth fused to hips, face to sex,

the swollen pad where the bee lands.

Here they float:

eleven creamy moths, eleven white egrets

suspended in flight, eleven babies in satin bonnets,

eleven brides stiff in lace, the waxy pools

of eleven white candles, eleven planets

burning in space.

(From Like a Beggar. © 2014 by Ellen Bass. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Photo by Jim Gifford)