Poem-A-Day: Corpse Flower, Luna Moth by Daniel Tobin

December 18, 2013 Corpse Flower, Luna Moth by Daniel Tobin The deep wine  of it risen tall above  the buried    corm,  its ornamental  spathe furrowed thought-  fully, to human    warmth.  O un-branched  inflouresence, amorpho-  phalos, misshapen    swelling,  with its allure  of rotting flesh  for the scarabs    to follow,  hollow, to the sun-lit  trove, as though all  dark were light    unbidden    by our parsing  eye, and love itself  hidden inside    the word.    Call it life  enrapt with death's  blight, blooming  briefly.    ~    Emergent morning  in the sweet gum triggering  green, green its wings    fanning translucent  below the porch light--angelic,  a palm of light  opening.    Hallowed, hatched  each instar inches undercover,  a spent thing  climbing    larval, alluvial,  out of every cycle's shelf-  life, its rife  unknowing,    to become this end--  brief birth flying, flown, thrown  at midnight into  beginning.    Mouth-less, it appears  something bidden out of the dark,  out of the broadleaf,  unmoving,    to say something  wordlessly--the word we too  can neither speak  nor sing.        Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Tobin. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem "'Corpse Flower, Luna Moth' is, I suppose, about seeing the hidden in the manifest, which is probably something quite different than William Carlos Williams's old saw 'no ideas but in things.' Instead, the poem wants to create a living encounter in language with the distinct things it represents, which are two sides of one reality, like death and life. That living encounter, if it happens, happens through the word--the word that is language and the word that eludes utterance, but calls for utterance--being, singing--nonetheless." --Daniel Tobin Most Recent Book by Tobin Belated Heavens (Four Way Books, 2010)   Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.    Daniel Tobin is the author of numerous books of poems, including Belated Heavens (Four Way Books, 2010). His sixth book, The Net, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2014. Tobin lives in Boston.    Related Poems  A Moth in the Projectorlight [excerpt] by Joshua Marie Wilkinson  Simulacra   by Ching-In Chen  Company of Moths by Michael Palmer    __________________________ Love reading Poem-A-Day? Help support it today.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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