Summers in Indiana by the Lake
Delight is a wolf spider
big as a fist,
caught
in the flashlight’s beam,
back bristling with
eggs like a
thousand wobbling
eyes each one
staring blindly
but hopefully
into the future.
Ode to Mosquitos
According to one measure,
half the humans who ever
lived are dead due to your
murmurings, your little horror movie.
So why then do I feel kissed to
freshness by you, omnivorous &
particular, loving monkeys,
listening for the thunder
of the wild caribou herd?
I understand perfectly
you preferring my lover’s throat,
her O-negative, drinking her sticky
blood as your eggs like
moons bulge & grow.
Tell me what was it like to
land on a triceratops
horn, to drink blood from the
endless throat of a brachiosaur.
Summer song,
virus with wings, teach me to
probe for the pulse, to
plunge once more through
the false surface of things.
Adam Scheffler’s first book of poems, A Dog’s Life, was the winner of the 2016 Jacar Press Book Contest. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative, The Yale Review, The Common, The American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Verse Daily, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and many other venues. He teaches in the Harvard College Writing Program.
Header photo by Kollinger, courtesy Pixabay.
