The Nelligan Review

Nobody could quite love the lantern fly—
well, maybe Walt, wrestler with trees, who’d find
himself in one, reflected in its eye,
his passion for the fallen world as blind
as it was deep, the function of a mind

that had unlearned much it had proven wrong
about itself, so it could know the song
that was itself—was also anything
his eye or “I” might meet rambling along
at large, finding the world a place to sing

about, no matter what.—This thing has no
song but its own life, being driven, as
the sweetgum is (whose sap’s begun to flow),
sunward, skyward—only really has
sap-craving in it, plus the crimson raz-

mataz sub-wing it can’t see there or think
about, so can’t think itself toxic. Crowds
of them turn trees grey-yellow, make them stink
of rancid honeydew mold forming clouds
that roil and fan out down the trunks like shrouds—

​

and it could be this thing’s figurative
of death, though like Walt healthy—beautiful
when it spreads out its wings seeming to give
its colors to the sky—ungovernable
as life itself, having its life to live.