Tried to lift a swallowtail butterfly out of <br />a thick web, out of leg and wing fragments. <br />I think they were parts of moths and flies. <br />All the truncations, all the leaf chips, <br />dirty gauze strands, Chinese silver ash spores. <br />Held my thumb knuckle out for it to walk on. <br />That hesitating, that erotic clinging, that <br />flexing and trembling. At a garage window. <br />I forgot my tools inside the truck, <br />my work shoes by the pedals. <br />It came out on one thread. The window <br />behind the web was blank. Leather <br />insoles held the stained shapes of <br />my feet, those white swallows <br />pointing their beaks <br />at the underworld, pointing <br />at the carnivorous, pointing <br />and clinging. I was trying to lift it <br />through the leg and wing fragments <br />past the dry torso of a wasp. <br />Wrist bones secured with wire <br />in documentaries, fragmented in <br />my head. Mass grave photojournalism, <br />as usual quotas waiting for us, <br />incidental naturalism of our malice <br />documentaries went through my <br />interior gauze and webs. I was trying <br />to be steady. My hand close to the foot <br />below the wing, close to the breath <br />jumping on the rim of dirty strands. <br />To the antennae that looked moist, <br />to the remarkable fetal expression, <br />I held out my thumb knuckle.<br /><br />Doren Robbins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/natural-history-anti-war-poem/
