The self-brewing of the amaryllis rising before me.
Weeks of something’s decomposing—like hearsay
growing—into this stringent self-analysis—
a tyranny of utter self-reflexiveness—
its nearness to the invisible a deep fissure
the days suck round as its frontiers trill, slur
—a settling-ever-upward and then,
                                    now,
this utterly sound-free-though-tongued opening
where some immortal scale is screeched—
bits of clench, jolt, fray and assuage—
bits of gnaw and pulse and, even, ruse
—impregnable dribble—wingbeat at a speed
too slow to see – stepping out of the casing outstretched,
                                                            high-heeled—
something from underneath coaxing the packed buds up,
loosening their perfect fit—the smooth skin between them
                                                striating then
beginning to wrinkle and fold
so as to loosen the tight dictation of the four inseparable polished
                                                                        and bullioned
buds—color seeping-up till the icy green releases the sensation of
                                                                a set of reds
imprisoned in it, flushed, though not yet truly
visible—the green still starchy—clean—
till the four knots grow loose in their armor,
and the two dimensions of their perfect-fit fill out and a third,
                                                            shadow, seeps in
loosening and loosening,
and the envelope rips,
and the fringes slip off and begin to fray at their newly freed tips,
and the enamelled, vaulting, perfectly braided
                                                Immaculate
is jostled, unpacked—
the force, the phantom, now sending armloads up
into the exclamation,
and the skin marbles, and then, when I look again,
has already begun to speckle, then blush, then a solid un-
avoidable incarnadine,
the fourness of it now maneuvering, vitalized,
like antennae rearranging constantly,
the monologue reduced—or is it expanded—to
this chatter seeking all the bits of light,
the four of them craning this way then that according to
                                                            the time
of day, the drying wrinkled skirts of the casing
now folded-down beneath, formulaic,
the light wide-awake around it—or is it the eye—
yes yes yes yes says the mechanism of the underneath tick tock—
and no footprints to or from the place—
no footprints to or from—