-with the girl from Mount Saint Mary Academy-

Let's go to the mayfly.

It sits on the screen-door to the kitchen

If the door to the entry is left open.

Goo-goo eyed, the mayfly stares blankly

Into the face of the one day it has.

Mayflies covered

The outside walls and windows

Of the Carnival Drive-In on route 6

Sticking to the rims of its saturated

Paper-boat trays in deep-fried seafood.

There, at the farthest edge

Of the redwood picnic table

Where the great Watuppa Ponds

Of the Narrows split,—

Maureen Herron’s blue eyes veer

Outward toward the water

Across the southern pond,— the distance

Leaving a comet's tail of fatal ice.

Pinch the mayfly gently by its wings.

Look within to the frail and failing

Heart of the mayfly.

This is the barely beating

Transparent heart of man.

She said I should go without her.

She said she had found another.

The mayfly disappears long before winter.

                               Westport, Massachusetts