Corpse Flower, Luna Moth Poem 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.