Attempted Astronomy on the Entomology Excursion
It is my first day outside
and I will wear a suit.
I adjust my tie in the bathroom mirror
only to notice my thumbnail
twitching until it shakes free
as the birthing wings of a beetle.
The half-moon insect now crawls
into the faucet before me. I move
my gaze to the window where a breeze
makes the street’s air gravity-less, clearing
away pollen. I expect to see a parade
but there is no one, no one, and
in the reflection, my hair is long, and
in the reflection, my beard is to my chest.
My hands are covered in dirt.
I turn on the water but it releases a spray of
miniscule flying insects—
beetles with the eyes of a fly,
spiders with wings of a dragonfly,
small praying mantis with centipede legs—
and they circle my head, a clueless
Saturn as I call outside to no one
and stand in place like the dying planet I am.
Robert Krut is the author of three books: The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (SUNY/Codhill Press, 2019), which received the Codhill Poetry Award; This Is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013), which was awarded the Lanitis Poetry Prize; and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox, 2009). His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Gulf Coast, The Cimarron Review, Blackbird, Passages North, and many more. Additional information can be found at http://www.robert-krut.com/.