Poetry Post

Witnessing

    for Patty

by Gary Miranda

Beneath leaves of a plant that’s named for milk
that bleeds milk, we search for chrysalides—
things I’ve never seen, but whose name I like.
And I think, as I look, of all the things

you’ve taught me to name—larkspur, loose-
strife, sea lavender, plants called hens
and chickens, butter and eggs, your eyes
bright with such knowledge, solid as nouns.

Just so, you tell me now of creatures
who choose the underbelly of these leaves to make
wombs of, studded with gold, from which emerge
monarchs that range the length of the Atlantic

in hordes—one more fact I must have missed
by skipping the fourth grade.  And when, today,
we find no trace of anything resembling this
miracle you mention, and I’m about to say

you  made it up, you bend down, break a pod,
and blow unlikely butterflies in the sky’s face—
not black and orange like monarchs, but cloud-
thought white, or like the way I mark my place
when I read your eyes which, witnessing, claim:
This is the world.  Try to learn its name.

Poet and screenwriter Gary Miranda was born in Bremerton, Washington and raised in the Pacific Northwest. He has published poems in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.  His poetry is widely anthologized and he has published four book-length collections, one of which—Listeners at the Breathing Place—won the Princeton Contemporary Poetry competition and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

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