Passion

He wants to be excited again
like Japanese beetles
coupling among the ferns
and hollyhocks,
dropping beside themselves
in sex-scented traps,
their iridescence deepening
to a smothering stink.
He wants to be among the few
that whir up out of the bag
and back again, willfully undone.

Roger Pfingston
Copyright © 2002

Roger Pfingston's poems are scheduled to appear in Red River Review, The Louisville Review, Southern Indiana Review, and Poetry Midwest. A chapbook, Singing to the Garden, will be published in 2003 by Parallel Press at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.