Margaret Newlin
Dirge for Four Mexican Jumping Beans
What you have seen
All these centuries,
Old moon,
Snide face!
And tonight, do you deign to attend
This diminutive event?
Tapping, tapping, like a blind man
The Daddy-Long-Legs comes.
Dipping and stitching, two dragonflies
Suture the water like a shroud.
Entrepreneur, shrill,
An August locust leads a wail and rattle
Over these moth babies
So far from home,
So far from the Yerba tree,
Eating themselves stupidly, drolly, to death
Here in four jailhouse wombs,
Four flowerpod coffins.
Slowly, slowly
The shells turn dark. Tick . . . Tick . . .
Tick . . . . . .
Tick.
Your face hangs thin-lipped,
Moon,
Half turned away.
How bored you must be
By our clownish departures,
Miniature
Unwilling to spring cosy prisons,
Utterly
Predictable.
Page(s) 34
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