Colophon

More than the beetles turned russet,

sunset, dragging their shield, more than

the crickets who think it’s evening all afternoon,

it’s the bees I love this time of year.

Sated, maybe drunk, who’ve lapped at the hips

of too many flowers for one summer but

still must go on hunting, one secret

closing, another ensuing, picking

lock after lock, rapping the glass,

getting stuck in a puddle of dish soap,

almost winter, almost dark, reading far past

the last paragraph into the back blank page,

acknowledgments, and history of type.

I think when my head finally cracks

out will come one of those ravening scouts

autumnal with hunger beyond any sipping,

swallowing, beyond the hive’s teeming

factory’s needs. I think maybe then,

when I’m dying like a bug in a puddle

of dish soap, I’ll be relieved,

my wings wet capes and not working,

antennae slicked back and not working,

eye that sees the ruby above going out,

eye that sees the ruby within getting brighter

as I drag myself to a tomato ripening

on the window sill, reddest, softest

island of my last planet, last aureola,

stinger waving and useless. I’ll wait then,

while air from the north rushes gulf air,

a tree indicating wildly, each leaf woke

in orange outcry. It won’t be suffering,

exactly. Rain coming, then gone, a chill

that means all my barbarous kind are alone

and perishing, our unrecognizable young

buried and waiting, bodies of fire becoming

bodies of air. I don’t think there’s any way

to prepare.

Copyright Credit: Dean Young, “Colophon” from First Course in Turbulence. Copyright © 1999 by Dean Young. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, www.pitt.edu/~press/.

Source: First Course in Turbulence (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999)