Byzantine Botanical Textbook

Some of Juno's milk
having fallen from the lips
of the infant Hercules
gave rise to lilies
in the warm carriage
of your mouth.  The warm
caul of blood
between us, what
moves the lit up
body of Christ a gospel
of the flood that pours
from me: the body
of a butterfly in three
movements.  A struggle,
a wringing of Juno's
milk from our hair,
the drops falling
in a cerulean ground,
taking root in a ground
we tread.  A birthday
is the body of Christ
in the soul's limitless
terra firma.  The body
of Christ is the body
of Christ is the trumpet
of a lily, and Juno
nurses the babe, a summer
swept garden with you
among the vines
and thorns, a wisterian
man tending a woman
and tending a child
and tenderness in the graft
that joins them at the root.