Trick Narcissus
She’d wandered away from her lazing friends
To watch a cormorant scissor its wings
In the sunlight and there among the bull thistle
And foxtail—names her mother taught her—
Was a hundred-headed cluster of ruffled jack snipes
Ablaze like a bouquet of fallen stars.
The snapshot she posted did nothing
To capture the scale, the smell, the crenellated
Madness of the swooping blooms.
When she tugged the stem it was as if she
Swung the lever of a roller-coaster and out
From the earth boiled a blur of hooves. She
Roared for her parents until she couldn’t breathe,
Until the soil closed over her like the sea.
On some stray thread there must exist the day
Persephone picks the prize narcissus and brings
It home. Demeter loves how the fracas of petals
Fireworks against the off-white wall! The fruit
Of a single bulb brims over a big enamel bucket,
Sweetly stinking up the house until they toss it
On the compost heap and get on with their lives.
Maggie Dietz is author of the poetry collections Perennial Fall (Chicago, 2006) and That Kind of Happy (Chicago, 2016). Read more.