Lines on a Vibrant Dahlia, by Terry L. Norton

Spider Invasion, photography by Evelyn Eickmeyer-Quinones (USA) contemporary

Lines on a Vibrant Dahlia
 
Like you, Medusa was a beauty, too,
but then her lovely locks to adders turned
and stunned so much those who beheld her that
their warm, live flesh to cold dead stone transformed.
 
You, though, possessed with rich resplendent crown,
draw devotees, unlike that Gorgon fiend.
Yet those who give your glory but a glance
do not perceive some noxious fatal end.
 
No, they would have to scrutinize your core,
hermaphroditic center, where reside
the pistil and the stamen of your bloom,
which like a dazzling star beguiles and guides
 
winged pollinators, acolytes of your
rebirth. For in your eye lies something still,
dark, spindly-legged, and dire that waits for one
to light for it to venomize with nimble skill.
 
Terry L. Norton
 
Terry L. Norton is a retired professor of literacy at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Among his books are Cherokee Myths and Legends: Thirty Tales Retold (2014), Trickster Tales of Southeastern Native Americans (2023), and Monkey Tales Around the World: A Folklore Anthology (2024), all published by McFarland. Among other publishing venues, his poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Chained Muse, The Society for Classical Poets, and New Lyre.
 
Evelyn Eickmeyer-Quinones lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and is a long-time member of the South Carolina Writers Association. Her photographs have been published in Next Avenue, a PBS digital platform, and in Moonshine Review, a journal of creative prose and photography. The photo Spider Invasion, taken in her husband’s garden with a Nikon Coolpix B500 digital camera, won first place in the 2023 Kakalak Anthology of Poets and Artists.