Summertime

Ash-brown tatters lofted on pheromones,

gypsy moths flutter among boughs and across the meadow

like confetti. Beyond hunger. Only sex

drives the males. The females wait

folded within crevices in bark. They’ve lost their mouths.

Admirable to be so single-minded.

Just days ago, as creepy adolescents

they chewed the branches bare, littered the path

with skeleton leaf-stalks, tore new craters

out of the canopy so the sky fell through:

we, too, could strip a forest, strip

a continent, but not so lacily.

The lanyard on our neighbor’s flagpole clanks

in the wind, the fraying stars and stripes

fluster and droop. The lime-green

katydid impersonates a folded leaf

pressed to the maple trunk, chiding, rasping,

preparing to mate and chew. Along the road

wild Sweet William and purple chicory

festoon derelict beer cans and vodka bottles in the ditch.

We have everything we need, but we want more,

and faster. The crushed garter snake

is scrawled on the tarmac in an ampersand.