Nightly Crumpled Paper Bug

i.

I wouldn’t call them inner things
Invisible they are. Lamplit
They would reach me

Especially the puniest ones, but I
Should see them tinged, lensed via the hour
Magnified through the screen of ineluctable self

Eyes attracted by a tiny little bugger
To all appearances winged but not using its wings
While trudging over that shining wad of paper

Too choppy a verse in it, me
Attempting to redo the lines, in a way by
Mere observing without helping

Do I nevertheless interfere
Quanta-wise, whatever...
―If anyone’s affected, then it’s me

Struggles from rumple to rumple
Nightly crumpled paper bug
Pinpoint mountaineer of radiant ridges

Up and down the obliterate, doesn’t know
How it assists a wakeful I that is far
Less distracted than steered.


ii.

Deep in the night
A winged bug crawls over
A wad of paper
On the lamplit desk

Helps along the poet
Who struggles to amend
A poem apparently
Not yet discarded.


April 25, 2011