Julia’s Catalpas
by Frederick Turner
At her memorial, March 2011
Soon they’ll be blooming in Cambridge, their white wimples of novitiate,
Those virginal trumpets freaked at the throat with purple and gold,
Frilled with their positive curvature, flouting this space-time’s geometry,
Falling in garlands over the green of their heart-cusped leaves.
And they’ll perfume the block, the street, the old city of Cambridge,
Fill with enormous fragrance the quads and the porches and libraries.
Julia’s not coming back, but her music is still overflowing,
The scent of her words as amazing as Sappho, as Hildegard,
The white and the purple and gold of her shy and secretive throat
Given now to the world, as Flora, the branched one, the poem.
Copyright © 2011 by Frederick Turner.