Rhizanthella Gardner

The sensuous signs offer us a new structure
of time, time rediscovered at the heart of lost
time itself, as an image of eternity
~Deleuze

Sequestered in earth, invisible flowering
truffled to fungus in wet dark. Sniff past
the ground, see past the crack in the soil
incise with fingertips the parted dirt, to find
the threatened orchid, sessile and yawning
breath like honey

He rolls away from her and the smell of them
puffs from the sublayer of sheets, meeting places
of bodies, wet and sticky shrink back in the quiet
away from the heat, sound sinks deep into
their inner ears

These hours are torn from their timeline, her heart
from its shape, her bare hands from their image
She is speaking inside herself and each word
burns long enough to clothe his back in what
she can't contain

Slow speed of night moving into the unseen
deadline of morning like a tongue into a mouth
stroking language

Bucket Orchid

Labyrinthine flower
of courtship, and its
sodden bees, set free
after the glue has set

Looking into its throat
almost the shape of
an eye, or a hand, like
the origin of a myth

Disappointment only
opens its dirty palm
the second time round

The return visit-
she says to him 'Now I
see.' Closes her eyes