Moth Orchids
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.
Ellen Bass’s most recent books are Indigo, (Copper Canyon, 2020), Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon, 2014), and The Human Line (Copper Canyon, 2007). Read more.
Ellen Bass, “Moth Orchids” from Like a Beggar. Copyright © 2014 by Ellen Bass. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org