Paula Cisewski
The Word String Can’t Blister Your Hands
Someone says they’ve got
a surprise
for you at the end of a string:
the etymology of your favorite thing’s word.
With interest you follow the string around bedroom
corners, through dimestores, and across ocean
floors until you find yourself
in an English pasture, staring at the end:
a little bow tied to the exo-skeleton
of a five hundred pound butterfly. There is a note
coiled in its proboscis like a good dog
with your slippers. Translated by the first
able stranger, the note
is said to read: The wings
are perfectly preserved and
somewhere in Iceland. You wonder at how
old you’ve become and who else
is not to be trusted
with language.