Little Lion Face
By May Swenson
Little lion face
I stopped to pick
among the mass of thick
succulent blooms, the twice
streaked flanges of your silk
sunwheel relaxed in wide
dilation, I brought inside,
placed in a vase. Milk
of your shaggy stem
sticky on my fingers, and
your barbs hooked to my hand,
sudden stings from them
were sweet. Now I'm bold
to touch your swollen neck,
put careful lips to slick
petals, snuff up gold
pollen in your navel cup.
Still fresh before night
I leave you, dawn's appetite
to renew our glide and suck.
An hour ahead of sun
I come to find you. You're
twisted shut as a burr,
neck drooped unconscious,
an inert, limp bundle,
a furled cocoon, your
sun-streaked aureole
eclipsed and dun.
Strange feral flower asleep
with flame-ruff wilted,
all magic halted,
a drink I pour, steep
in the glass for your
undulant stem to suck.
Oh, lift your young neck,
open and expand to your
lover, hot light.
Gold corona, widen to sky.
I hold you lion in my eye
sunup until night.
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Had great conferences with my kids' teachers yesterday. My older son had gotten an invitation to apply for a math/science magnet program that we just assumed they sent home to all the kids, or at least all the top-level math kids; turns out they sent it to only two kids in the grade. My younger son is reading two years ahead of his grade and his teachers think he is bright and funny and adorable, which we think too, but we know we are very biased. Also, they thought he was working on grade level in math but then they gave him an evaluation with the objectives for a grade up and he had mastered nearly all of them, even though they hadn't been taught in class.
Major complaints are that they both have terrible handwriting and that they can both frequently be found with their heads in books when they are supposed to be doing other things; also, they have a tendency not to raise their hands before correcting the teachers. They get all of this honestly from me. *g* The math genes, however, come from my husband.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
HOWL! And SHRIEK! I need to know what to wear! And whether lycanthropy passes from generation to generation, I suppose.
Am going tonight to the local preview of Master and Commander, for which I won a pass from Entertainment Weekly. It's in Georgetown so I get to go out to dinner and go wander around the cool shops first. Darn, will be a day late on my Enterprise review...don't cry.
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