Phalaenopsis
Moth
is what an apostle
of Linnaeus named it.
But at this kitchen table
in this liminal hour, I'm tired
of men's takes on nature.
And Linnaeus, old spy
in your hothouse of flowers,
you might have reconsidered
the tendriled upended genus,
the profane yet prayerful
shape of it, if
just before dawn
you knelt, as a midwife
or a lover does, before
the rising body of a woman:
her epiphytic mind, her
singular surging muscle,
and her orbed gynecoid
hips, coming to a head
at tendriled lips
and radiating
Promise.
Ingrid Andersson has practiced as a home-birth nurse midwife for over 20 years. She studied poetry and literature in Swedish, German, French and English, as well as anthropology, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before mixing that fertile ground with the art and science of midwifery. Read more.