Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window
        For Lauren Marie Espada

The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect,
fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.
How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping
a city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.
How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am
the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.
To quote Durán, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove
and walked away in the middle of a fight: No más. No more.

Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian
composer's concerto in his head, white horse hair fraying on the bow,
and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love,
not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth
we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen
on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.

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Copyright © 2021 Martín Espada All rights reserved
from North American Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission