Heather Kirn Agnostic Visits the Nature Conservatory The book of Chrysalides
dangles by a push pin poked
through its half-formed wings.
It hangs, not from an oak,
but from a sterile, coded shelf
encased in perfect weather
to coax the coddled seed of itself.
The book of the Century Plant never
blooms but once in its dry stock
of sand-words and leaf-spikes.
Its bite is bigger than the up-stuck
fingers it calls petals: spite
in the arid sky, Moses stuttering
old names in desert vain.
But the book of Bonsai, feathering
green on its brown spine, feigns
a hundred decades for its simple three.
Here’s your psalm. Stand beside
it, be the giant you’ll never be,
the branching of your lungs’ bronchi
vast as an inverted tree.