81.

Winter has its verges, not a green snow

Or a cut edge along the margin of a walk

And dancers squint out from their hoods

Kicking off mukluks, shedding parkas

As if this lake in the Shield were the great

Basin between Europe and Africa.

The taste of the chokecherries is too tart for death

But even a child sees mosquitoes die

And in that death his own, my own:

I remember: insects were hatching, buzzing,

Dying, slow-swift, in a movement beyond them.

Laws natural or divine so wanton.

Was it fig or apple or chokecherry —

Murderous ignorance, that moment always?