Boarding: Hemaris thysbe

Most large sphinxes pay quiet visits at night,
but not the Hummingbird Clearwing. Black antennae
clamped to its head like forceps, crawling undone
from a bed of thorns, this flying hypodermic is not
what one expects. Its thorax, ridged with green fur,
the base of a light bulb screwed to a lick of fire—
no bird: an imposter, a thumb-sized sea lion with wings
of burnt newspaper, now dousing itself in a milkweed.
And when it unfurls the primal eel of its tongue, longer
than law, long as the lion-moth itself, to wade
what had once seemed a rose, one could surrender
one's timid original hand: let this tongue rinse
away such useless placenta as oneself, what
feigns to be separate from moth or claw or heat—

because Pyramis and Thisbe weren't ready for what
they saw. Having forsaken their wall for a time
they imagined would be real, with unmodified moonlight
refracting off another's suddenly atomic
face: who can tell the blood from the berry,
the knife from the tooth? Immersed in the brine
of what one desires, a discriminating brain is useless. The peri-
meter shot, the wall rubble, one meets a brand
new loneliness, alienation without borderlines,
an indifferent, customless sea, where one drowns.
The moth: its umbilical tongue retracts, coils a rung
in its brain. Having peeled the rind off enough suns
for one hour, its wings' alchemical thunder gears
up for today's exit. Yet those antennae, that deliverance:

two black oars angle up from the waves, and the oarsman waits.

Lullaby

So you're home. Key to the lock, your clutter
and doubt through the door, hang your coat on its claw,

your palm in bloom, your shadow half-opened.
Any wonders under the bed, in the bend

of your knee? Any new or made new or nomads who
make songs into houses? It's humid,

humming in the locust trees, with eleven rings
on the telephone. Lift that crescent to your ear

and dust off your laughter, some dissonant love;
there's one with a brick house, and one who loves

to break. Where is a calm as is?
Half asleep, bottled in with the breeze,

one world yawning, another burning
too far from your door.

Where's here, or our? Where rivers
branch in your fist, and your errors

stand by you, won't blame you for
the rigid outlines you unloosed through the door.

Enough. And half, then another
paper clip, a clapping thunder,

book in your lap, feet on a chair,
when some haggard cherub

says you're neither particle nor wave
nor even disquiet tonight—has the weave

of kisses come undone again?
Are you too stubborn again? But then your brain

unbuttons, drifts to the floor, and pure
as the past, you start over.