The thirtieth day of May

Bugs beat against the tall pillars
of puffed out dandelions
clock the yellow sawteeth
as they go to seed
then follow
suspicious
to the soft pointillism
the breezy fluorescence
of summer screens
of open air
evenings

And the lightbulb inside the bulge
of light is the most swollen
moon they’ve ever seen
the hazy head of the dandelion
its delicate
globe
is nothing to this hot
hot heat
and once in
bugs buzz bright spirals figure
eights ovals
crawl the walls
swarm
and
burn

In the morning
bugs will drown in bedside glasses of water
down the sides of cooling cups of tea
wings flattened floating
others will beat at the screen
wanting out
while the dandelion
with its deep
tap root
its thousand thousand fruit
is content to flower and float
and flower

* * *

This is, I guess, a response to Polly's dandelion poem of a few days ago (though I only just realized it to be so as I wrote the last stanza).

It also harkens back to the Writers Retreat in Arnes last summer, when the (screened) windows let in so many swarms I had to block the space under my bedroom door with a towel - as though there was a fire in the next room, as though the bugs were a kind of smoke, could choke me.