These Are the Insects

Not birds, not crickets,

not even the random

spastic chatter of squirrels

quarreling across dead leaves;

there is nothing singing

from the trees, and the books

as I choose to remember

them suggest that should

be unsettling rather than

evidence of peace. And trees

is a misnomer for the way

the dozen or two shoots

of bamboo slough limply

forward in the wind like

each is a child late for a bus

he does not particularly

want to catch because

he would just as soon go on

listening to the red thing

the fever did inside his ears,

would rather with a hose

and a spoon make mud

bricks in the little shed-

veiled section of his uncle’s

garden. Even at eleven

he knows he should be

ashamed that his desires

are this small and involve

dirt on his underbelly,

and he hasn’t even

heard of the death

drive yet, or Wittgenstein’s

blackened finger ends

proposing what must

be, let alone Li Po, that sub-

lime drunk, who crum-

pled into a moony, mud-

lit scrim of pond, then

woke to find the hard

sheen of the afterlife

bearing down, as well as

a trio of pigs politely

asking whether they could

begin to eat what his body

still obtained, the pigs

pointing to the rice-

like line of maggots already

starting in on his pale

legs. Poor Li Po, dead,

quite consciously,

despairing in heaven’s

sudden mud and reeds,

with no heart to tell

the pigs he still loves

his body—wastes,

instead, the morning

hovering inches above

himself, watching, thinking:

really, these are the insects

that would destroy us,

and they don’t even sing.