Late tomato, least onion,
cold remainder, worthless thing,
lovers who populate and disappear
the world, tell me
before I drink forgetfulness from the river,
how can a woman
who beat the silhouette of a burglar
from her curtain with a broom
succumb to a bright
shadow on an x-ray
when, on her garden wall,
in the last light birds erase
from the air, Polyphemus moths,
big as two hands, open?