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