by Libby Mislan

as if to say

are there lovers on earth more exquisite than monarch and milkweed? 
monarch’s spring flight north is slow and sailing, wing muscles pumping 
in the thorax, beady eyes dimly detecting the delicate pink flowers 
of the common plant and landing lightly as if to say, honey of ten 

hundreds of years, i’m home— she lays her eggs on the shady 
underbelly of milkweed— and egg becomes caterpillar, and caterpillar 
feasts ferociously on milkweed leaves as if to say, survival is dubious— 
and milkweed fills caterpillar with the perfect portion of compounds 

poisonous to predators, as if to kiss her forehead and say, you
forgot to trust— and exquisite is her chrysalis, blue-green with 
gold dots, and exquisite is the moment when she sheds her green
exoskeleton and emerges as butterfly, drying her orange and black wings 

in the summer sun, flapping slowly as if to say, i am queen
because of you, and as fall circles back, and milkweed hardens 
to seed, monarch knows in her small as sesame seed mind it is time
to go south, and she follows her solar compass home—and exquisite 

is the grief that monarch may not find milkweed on her journey—
that herbicides have skimmed them off the wild edges 
of corn fields where they once grew in abundance— that monarch
will search fleetingly in a dance disrupted, and fall to rest without 

laying eggs in milkweed’s soft haven, breaking an ancient 
migratory chain— exquisite is the grief that a harsher sun 
could heighten the compounds in milkweed, poison for monarch, 
a fragile symbiosis gone wrong— and the forest in mexico 

where monarch returns to spend winter could fall silent, when before 
the flapping of millions of wings created a constant fluttering, 
like summer rain— and all the trees could fall bare, when before the 
butterflies would cover them, sleeping so close together for warmth 

in massive clumps, that even their orange was obscured— and the people 
of the forest could wait for the souls of the dead to arrive on el dia 
de los muertos, like they had forever and ever, but they would not show— 
and the people would explain to their children— once, we were blessed 

with these daughters of the sun, and the children will wonder 
why these mysterious winged creatures fill their dreams, 
always on broad-leaved plants with tiny flowers, never one without 
the other, as if milkweed whispers to monarch as sappho whispered 

to her lover, someone will remember us/ even in another time.

on the cancellation of sakura matsuri

they say the earth wasn't made for us humans, 
that it will live on, happier, after we are gone—
but i do wonder if the cherry blossom trees will 
miss us this year at the brooklyn botanical garden, 
where they will fruit for no one— if they will miss, 
in japan and worldwide, our cheerful feasting 
at their trunks — if, like dr. emoto’s experiments 
on water reacting to loving words, the blossoms  
respond to our kind attention, feeling our nourishment 
like a kind of nutrient, a subtle root-curl scientists 
struggle to capture as data. i sense those two hundred 
some trees deep inside the garden gates feel the 
lonely brilliance of blossoming for no audience— 
perhaps you know the feeling—of stumbling upon 
your own epiphany, coasting solo into your grand 
finale, without a single follower or admirer to 
witness you flourish, just your dance your sweat
your breath your private ecstasy, and then the
melancholic wish to share your bounty— call me 
anthropomorphic, but i feel the need to say: 

blossoms, if you are indeed feeling the blues, 
i want you to know that we are still here, writing  
love poems and kneeling metaphorically at your 
trunks, and this year, i hope you go so deep inside 
your own floral explosion that you forget the 
empty seats— i hope you relish in the soft leather 
of your petals, luxuriate in your creamy almond 
vanilla scent, just for this year, i hope you go to 
seed basking in your own light pink love.   

in a name

they 
say that 
columbus was 

lured to the shores 
of america by the 
smell of sassafras, an 

eerie biophilia— he fell
for the sweet scent  of  freshly
snapped twigs and citrusy leaves, like me 

when i was hiking in the hills of wanaque, 
new jersey, wanaque translated from lenape 
meaning land of sassafras, and i saw all over 

the baby leaves tinged with red, their shape so 
round and cheerful like hands drawn by a child, 
or hands in mittens, and i smelled the blend that 

pulled me in and got me so high on leaving the  city— 
these trees are survivors from half a millennium ago, 
when heavy-footed men stepped off boats and learned 

from the natives of sassafras’ medicine, saw how it 
healed their fevers and cuts, blemishes and std’s, 
aches and pains— and they began to dig hungrily 

for roots in a one-sided lust, ships like the 
discoverer accruing pounds of root by  
the thousands, the spanish, 

french, and english in  
frenzied competition— 
on my ascent  

to the tallest 
rock in  
wanaque,

i heard 
a rustling 
and found 

myself staring 
into the
soft

eyes of a 
white-tailed deer
munching on sassafras 

leaves, and i knew this reciprocity 
wound back through the ages, in  a 
timeless way, the way this friday afternoon

was not friday anymore, it just us crouching in 
reverence in the misty rain and the young fawn 
grazing, and i knew white-tailed deer was not truly 

called white-tailed deer— just as sassafras is not 
sassafras but is winuak for the lenape, pauane for 
the timuca, kombu for the choctaw—  there was no 

mutuality in that european craze for the plant, backed 
up by their doctors, proclaimed magic for their ships’ 
hulls, promised to keep bedbugs from beds, lice from 

chicken coops, until they depleted their once plentiful 
harvest, and couldn’t gather but 30 pounds for a 
shipment— and the fad faded, as they do, and the 

trees were left to regenerate in a land forever altered— 
and from the highest point i looked out over the 
hills, green with spring, and i knew new jersey 

was not new jersey— and from far off through 
the fog i could make out that majestic 
skyline and i knew that place i 

lived and came from was not 
new york city—  and all the 
words on my english 

tongue went blank 
and i could 
not speak.