Manifesting Daphne
Seeking solace, Daphne flees the grasp of bright Apollo
cries to the river, becomes herself
a tree with a head full of blackbirds.
Her crown a cacophony of chaotic good
she roots by a well-spring of silence
green-limbed brown-eyed warm with resin rising
xylem lifting blood from soil to sun, tracing out through fractal net
offering up pages, paper hands to summer light that burns and feeds.
This creation photosynthesis bio-alchemy poesis
shakes my limbs and disarranges
all those blackbirds yet
I am a willow tree by water
who is not anxious in the time of drought, and trembles not when heat comes
for my downcast leaves stay green, my murmurs rise as mist and fall
as rain and rise again, my naiad eyes are always wet
with tears of sap that crystallize to amber on the page.
Wren Donovan
Originally published in Hecate Magazine, Volume IV, 2021
Seeking solace, Daphne flees the grasp of bright Apollo
cries to the river, becomes herself
a tree with a head full of blackbirds.
Her crown a cacophony of chaotic good
she roots by a well-spring of silence
green-limbed brown-eyed warm with resin rising
xylem lifting blood from soil to sun, tracing out through fractal net
offering up pages, paper hands to summer light that burns and feeds.
This creation photosynthesis bio-alchemy poesis
shakes my limbs and disarranges
all those blackbirds yet
I am a willow tree by water
who is not anxious in the time of drought, and trembles not when heat comes
for my downcast leaves stay green, my murmurs rise as mist and fall
as rain and rise again, my naiad eyes are always wet
with tears of sap that crystallize to amber on the page.
Wren Donovan
Originally published in Hecate Magazine, Volume IV, 2021
