Laurie Kuntz writes

Butterflies and Sirens

(A response to the sudden migration of Painted Lady Butterflies to Los Angeles, spring of 2019)

 

I was there for the rain,

but left

 

before the early bloom

of  nettles and mallows,

 

was absent

when the angel voiced siren of Los Angeles

 

taunted the Painted Ladies north 

to feast on lupines and milk weed,

 

everywhere

the cloak of orange, 

 

their black wing-tipped eyes,

staring down at the amazed denizens, 

 

while skimming by buildings,

and bike racks, and bus horns blazing

 

hundreds in mid-day light,  

hovering, while the sirens of the city,

 

blared through this place of comings and goings

drawing all to look closer,

 

at the shock of arrival,

the surprise of flight,

 

and a noon epiphany--

the sirens' calls--

 

no longer in a place of draught.

--Paul Chambers

Laurie Kuntz writes

Birdsong,  

or my dead mother's voice:

a whisper in the wind

 

Laurie Kuntz writes

Epiphany for the Approaching Spring

It always creeps up on me,

this day unmarked by any romantic inkling

but here it comes--spring,

when pockets of flowers arrive in shouts of yellow,

and on the vestige of a windy dawn, an ocean remains stilled,

while the light waxes from frost to shine,

marking us with time and a surprise bloom of bright

red camellias opening into the new season, the way we are.

  

Crimson camellia -- Rose Ganucheau

Laurie Kuntz writes

Peonies and Peacocks

After a painting by Maruyama Okyo (1733-95)
painted in 1777 during the Edo Period

In Japan, spring peonies bloom and girls learn
of the subtle opening of petals,
the faint odor of a blossoming season.
Mothers whisper, tateba shakuyaku, behave like a peony,
grace in fullness, reserve in a showy petal.

Maruyama paints peonies as backdrop,
fading flowers become ground cover
under peacocks strutting their palettes
muting all other colors.

To look beyond the painting,
is to enter a garden at dusk
and see tulips closing as the cicadas' drone
harmonizes with the conversation of women,
who wear the luxury of rose scented baths.

Their kimonos swish in the grace of windswept grass,
they finger blue and white teacups, dwell on the fine sip of conversation,
and by the peonies' blind bloom they stand on ceremony
accepting the dimming light, the truth about petals,
and the conceit of the strutting peacock
living in grace and ceremony,
not far beyond the scope of the picture.

 

 Botan-Kujaku-zu (Peonies and Peacocks) -- Maruyama Okyo


 Peonies and Peacocks -- Nagasawa Rosetsu