The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness
The bride of the Yellow Emperor was enjoying tea in the Imperial Gardens when a cocoon fell in the fourteen-year-old’s cup. It unraveled. The thread felt soft and strong. Her secret was sacred until two visiting monks smuggled out thousands of silkworm eggs in bamboo walking sticks. She wanted them put to death. As the larvae used to die in the wild after gorging on the veined leaves of the mulberry. They lived briefly as tiny naked creatures with horns on their backs before spinning one long saliva thread for a cocoon. Until we engineered them flightless and defenseless. Now we cultivate and boil them before they break the spun silk. To kill for profit is the saddest and oldest human story. In Asia the quest to fabricate silk stronger than steel goes on in cages staged with shrubs. We stared in awe into the small bedroom of the north where the bride at eighty still longs to be changed by her lover. She taught us pleasure by offering her dyed silk blanket. And now I rest under its painted orchids. I have only this morning read her calligraphy on its underside that cautions not to mistake the ceremonial vessel for the sacrifice. That should I find the rare white mulberry before dying I may enjoy the juiciest of all fruits but god forbid I will have bitten and swallowed the clitoris of my wife.
Audio: Jane Miller reads “The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness”
Jane Miller has written twelve poetry books, most recently Paper Banners and Who Is Trixie the Trasher? and Other Questions, and two collections of essays, Working Time: Essays on Poetry, Culture, and Travel and From the Valley of Bronze Camels: A Primer, Some Lectures, & A Boondoggle on Poetry. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.