room 1603

the hotel is poor relative clean
through three tall windows the room looks east
over the old city toward the gulf

languid ceiling fans stir the listless
artificial air and just outside
a black wasp fusses with the mortar

drowsy dawn in pink and gray chiffon
stretches and rises behind the mist
shows herself in all her bruised beauty

at home just now in sleep my wife stirs
moves her hand across the empty sheet.

**

Bugs

At night now
in the middle of May
the hard case June bugs,
UPS trucks of the insect domain,
come and sit on the screen door,
bask in the kitchen light.

Flying for a June bug is not graceful,
it is no hummingbird, no swift chickadee;
the dragonfly must shake its bulbous head
at the racket and the effort.

Landing against the screen is clumsy,
some bounce off and land on their backs,
kicking their legs furiously as if to signal,
“What the hell? What the hell is this?”

My father enjoyed June bugs,
would let them crawl around his fingers,
their hooked legs clinging to the whorls.

We would examine them,
their sturdy shells, the lace wings hidden
within the carapace, their seeming fierceness
masking harmlessness.

He would cup them in his hands
to hear them buzz.
“Get out of here with that thing,”
my mother would command.
He would smile and hold up a long finger
with a fat bug gripping its tip
“Here, want to hold one?” and she would
raise her hands in mock terror.

My wife sits, head down, reading at the kitchen table.
Let’s see if I can get one of these guys.