Lit

by Benjamin Busch

The shed is full of insect sound
weakening the structure, nails vibrating,
everything aware of primacy.
Flies boil up in the heat,
hurl themselves against the windows,
manic and unsentimental we hope,
generations piled beneath them,
never imprinting the impasse of clear glass,
a myth passed in the smack and buzz
that cracks are made this way.
At night, blind and flightless,
stilled by the size of the unlit unknown,
they forget what they’ve seen,
unable to recall anything in particular,
a hot bare bulb proof that they would plunge themselves into the sun
to locate the place where light is,
an insensible Triassic urge to know that one fact,
no pattern but that of repetitive acts,
gripping the sheer rejection and falling,
losing faith and finding it, climbing back,
leaderless and unaware of their poverty,
comprehending no war, regret, or legacy,
spiders draining mummies and repairing tears in their nets.
Winters frost the panes white,
barren inflated fields of snow brighter than the sky,
leaden cold slowing the flies into some strange sleep,
their silence noticeable,
their hollowed gray dead burned off like ash.
Perhaps we have them wrong.
We want their love of light not to be love
because it would make us cry to see such passion.
They may be the most romantic of us all.

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