Violet,

beginning at the end of the spectrum:
fractals at the bottom of the color wheel,
flux of the first and second spectra.
Lavender as iris,

a blank inheritance of color, violet beginning
to be ultraviolet: finishing as plum, or fuchsia,
completing lavender as orchid, lilac,
mauve. Epiphytes in a purple canopy.

Advent purples, prefiguring. All the dilly, dilly
winter brides in violet, beginning at the ending
of the year.

Lenten purples, bruise of spring, auroras at
the poles of Jupiter: Thursday’s spectral candle,
amethyst and grape, tincture of electric purple.

Butterflies see violet: the compound eye that sorts
out wine-blue shadows on the petals of a flower
snow-white to us, short-wave patterns that begin
where purples end.

Bright vision wavers past beginning, ultra-shapes
in lilac and in orchid, each petal like a wing,
diffraction in a Morpho’s eye, ultra-violet
receptors—lavender beginning at the end of light.

Pantoum for an Antique Map

“What is that thing?” I ask you.
“It’s something like a map,” you say.
I’m sleep deprived. It’s hard to concentrate.
The yellow foolscap opens like an eye.

“It’s something like a map,” you say.
There are no stars tonight. This is not a star map.
The yellow foolscap opens like an eye,
the projection upside down. What is projection?

I see no stars tonight, and this is not a star map.
Equal area or conic? What is tangent case?
And what’s projection—is it upside down,
oblique, transverse? I’m half asleep,

unequal to this area. Is it tangent case?
The map is old—antique geometry of distance.
Projection of a sphere? Oblique? Transverse?
I look beneath the map—adverse directionality,

this antique map an old geometry of distance.
I’m sleep deprived. It’s hard to concentrate.
The map is upside down: adverse directionality.
“What is that thing?” I ask you.