“Cantharophilœ [Cantharophily]; plants adapted for fertilisation by beetles. These are large diurnal flowers of striking colours, affording convenient shelter, and containing an exceedingly large supply of pollen besides occasionally some easily accessible honey (Magnolia).”  Müller (1883)

“...On the other hand, beetles greatly damage many flowers by devouring the anthers and other structures.” Knuth (1906)

                    

you are my first thought when i wake

as the knife of soft pink march light

splits open my mouse-eared buds

slowly, slowly

among the smooth and silver

                                

this landscape is too young to remember

traditional dances, cretaceous promises, how hands

can hold hands of other hands

                                

loving you is thermogenic:

my body warms in your image

volatile oils course through my veins

a sweet ranalean odor bursts from my throat —

                                

                                this ripe scent (like a jasmine peeling a clementine)

                                drifts towards you on the humid, mid-morning air

                                

in your hunger, you find me

your clumsy wander a familiar dance:

leg Bumping stigma Bumping antennae 

Bumping anther —

                                             

i become volcanic with impatience

                                what does any god know of fault lines?

                                

your bite is an ontogenic caress

we exhale and millennia pass

on the back of a billion tiny suns

your obsidian belly,

your elytra yellowed and heavy

                                

satiated, you vanish down my spine

leaving behind memories of another me

                                

somewhere sugar is burning

while my cream tepals brown in the wind

the jagged edges a reminder of all the yous we have been

how quickly summer swells again within my gut

how quickly songs turn to compost turn to dust