Moth Orchid

I like – don’t you? – that it has an insect tattooed
in its sanctum sanctorum, a suitor’s pseud.
That’s one aspect of its ghostliness, its moon-tones,

its utter prescience, not to mention cojones.

For if those speckles don’t answer to the footprints
of insects tramping through the moondust
of its pollen, I don’t know what its six headdresses

are for, or what their iodine-and-moonlight tint redresses.

Nor why each of those hexa-heads tricks
in a slightly different direction, and mimics
a Demoiselles d’Avignon tableau

modulating to monstrousness from beauty.

Or say they mimic a mother’s uncanny abilities,
such as vision in 360 degrees
(since this was a Mother’s Day gift

which required equal parts extravagance and thrift).

Or say that the gift of a moth orchid
to the mother from her kid
encrypts something of her lonely midnight vigils,

the moon in varying dosages like Advils . . .

Because its soft tints and moon-tones
combine with its etymological cojones
to represent the parent who must hybridise

both mother and father in her kids’ eyes.