in the garden where she used to sit

who doesn’t love the monarchs briefly
halloweening? the cloudless sulphurs licking at the tips?

the chrysalis in silk? the instar self devouring?

in the garden where she used to sit,
the ants like indras

soft paraded toward the lizards’ sacrifice of tails
the crotons clowned like pagliaccis

the squirrels trapezed, death defying. The four-o-clocks
at three applauded wanton breezes

who doesn’t love the snake, the lost umbilical,
rising to the flute

of garden birds, even as she
slipped from consciousness?

---

Kathleen Hellen’s collection Umberto’s Night won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for poetry in 2012. Hellen’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, jubilat, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, and West Branch, among others. Her credits include two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Her latest poetry collection is The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin.