The Effects of Sunset

                                        Iron Shore, Montego Bay, 1974

At the edge of the yard, the grass thinning
to white sand speckled with the shadows
of late afternoon, the insects-waxy, black

heretics with beetle-like shells-could be found
avoiding the surf, and who but that small boy
could summon such a scream, that lion cub

in the desert, that whimpering Prophet in training?
In Judea, the insects bandaged the rotting wood
(or were they devouring it?), their slick

carapace without even a trace of sand.
One might say these insects swarmed,
but they were not bees, they carried

nothing sweet in their husks.
Exoticism, the late light, O summer—
a foot away, the water was dark, getting darker.