Reservations iii

If I am still, the flies

will not stay.

They will not wait

for me to lose patience,

nor will they lick their lips

and whistle at my sister.

They are the least

of savages.

I have a bag of empty beer cans

left open at one corner

of the yard. Cold as it gets

in June at dusk,

a gruesomely hot steam

issues from it, silver 

in the moonlight.

Wherever Heaven's ceiling is

a great balloon has reached it.

And its long, glistening ribbon ends

on Earth in a flytrap.

Don't grab at it. 

Flesh corrodes the fabric.

The flies know this,

so they beat their wings

down hard, inching up the air

studying all ends 

of a long thread of light.