It isn't that I skin them human
these yellowjackets dying in the trap
or compare the size of brains
or say that there are other lives,
if there are other lives,
as some monks believe.
Or claim no wasp will ever cry for me,
none will ever miscount, kiss
innocent, register for the draft.
But only absolute sadness,
a piece of plastic hanging from a beam:
the circles they trace on its wall
in the town's first frost
a million miles from purpose.
Only the fact of it is wrong, and nothing else.
