Swift Perpetua
Love, I’ve thought up how we should die.
Consider the ancient froghoppers
just unearthed in fossil form, winged,
doubled, held in stone for as many years
as particles of dark rush through you now.
Each body is half a wing
of the larger body they make. Extinct?
Hardly. They pressed their fervor into the rock
that hid them—Anthoscytina perpetua
they are called, from the Latin perpet,
eternal love. Here is your transitory knee,
the lilt in the small of your back.
What holds love after the body? Your mouth
and hands poured out. Hold still
in the sieved quick of our coming together:
indistinguishable. A necessary dust.
