In summer late at night
moths, gnats and mosquitoes
drunk, enshroud a backporch light.
Slamming into it and each other
as if the light, or is it the heat,
has made them mad.
The night air so thick with them
I imagine them taking up the same space
at one time.
Dancing wildly on the humidity
like an electron cloud
they flurry.
Never matter nor energy,
simultaneously both,
simultaneously neither.

In summer late at night
when the weather wouldn’t let me sleep
and I come down to the kitchen to get a drink
and I see them
in their all-night fury
surrounding the forgotten
backporch light
I switch off their universe
and go back to bed.

I wonder if they, like electrons,
their nucleus having been split
fly off erratically in the dark
smashing into back porches
all over the world.

6/12/95