A dried wasp casts
its shadow—thorax
cinch-waist, sting
—against frosted glass.

Pinned like Icarus
to a globe of white,
its sere lobes fold
into elegant origami.

The year past has
found its cenotaph.
Ghosts waft in
the wind, swarming

into sight, revealing
themselves above
the houses, borne
on filament wings.

—David Yezzi

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David Yezzi is former Poetry Editor of The New Criterion. His most recent book, More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming from Measure Press.



This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 40 Number 3, on page 30
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https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/11/the-wasp-in-the-lamp