Everyday I Pass by Those Fragrant Lilies The Same Question They Would Pose to Me: “How Far, How Deep Can You See Through Us?”

On the way to a coming sheer form
as if in nothing more than unwilled
and downright absentmindedness,
trees around us have begun to drop
their summer dress—dot by dot—

and each bead, a dusk-dyed leaf—
so paltry, erratic and slow
as if all such furtive disrobe
needs to pass unnoticed,
no word to divert the fall.

But in the marsh below the bridge
sweet-scented lilies do still bloom
like petalled rhombi clad in white:
once pollinated, the growing fruit
would descend back and out of view

for its underwater maturation.
“I thought that was the color
you were then having on yourself,”
Lensky once said to his will-o’-the-wisp.
“Oh, no, I never wear that!” she avowed.

But there the efflorescent white fragrance
both still floats and stays—while skyward
extending so many of its unlocked arms,
disclosing in them starlike golden eyes,
singularly fixed and cast in a clasping charm

and ineffable spell they themselves have become.
And so—almost like women and their mirror meet
and each—each other’s prompt reflection—
are by the other—overcome and shocked.
Thus a butterfly of gaze is caught—

by its own beauty it’s never seen before.
For some it is the surface that draws them in
and does the work with the lines and shine;
for others, not as many though, it’s the depth,
and for fewer still—no fore, no back evermore.

Why, O why, did gods need to dole out the look
of hermaphroditic benumbing narcissus
to a man it killed, but to women they gave
hermaphroditic water flowers
and Nymphaea’s looks men then put
on top of their temple pillars?