Amaryllis in the Spring
because it's a pure & innocent thing

before a summer of rockets,
debris of hope—

              the Age of Discovery,
              the Punishment of Lust

an intravenous poison of decline forms
the new math: eye value minus itself

in waltz-time the body is radio-active,
there is no such thing as labor saving machinery

ask Garbo or Monroe, very happy one moment,
the next there was nothing left

their machines did the heavy lifting,
but one was not the loneliest number

Is she like Calypso
in The Camomile Lawn,
knelt down and speechless
by the fire, resembling
Jennifer Ehle so closely,
as the camera lingers
at her being naked as a jaybird,
and quite comely at that?

Or is she perhaps
more like Felicitas
in Flesh and the Devil,
a dead ringer for Greta Garbo,
who brazenly encouraged
illicit love and rivalry, only
to go quietly by falling
through thin ice?

Sometimes the siren's call
is more a winsome variation
in its silence.