A Strange Insomnia

“Summer Requiem” 
from A Strange Insomnia:
originally published in Grist

My hips were an apron of haze,
my flesh a feeling of snow
under the skin, tent pitched

in a nebulous field of bees.
The setting sun stole fire
from a phlox-rife field of flies

to prevent their self-
immolation. A swatch of vintage
silk landed like ash

on my fork. It was not
a butterfly but when I said
flight, its weightlessness

was a killing field
in which I could not eat.
A snapping turtle with bullets

in her back hauled herself
across the clover. I knew
it would take her two years

to die, while hundreds
of day-long lilies lived out
their lives one quick yellow

bloom at a time.
And still the snow fell
through me, sweet melt,

lemon cinnamon scent
of pie on the sill of the window.
When I say somewhere

it is summer I mean
somewhere the memory
of summer has lodged itself

in the logic of winter,
and when I say snow I mean
that I placed a piece of berry

pie on the tongue of my child
to witness his first communion
with the sun.