Crane Fly

Wherever walls are exposed
To the sky, sun lights the walls.

Don’t tell me an idle life
Has no desires. Life’s desire.

Your life’s wall-to-wall desire,
Open to sky, lit by lights.

A crane fly catches the eye
Of a cat stalking the lawn.

A young girl snatches the fly
From the cat, catching it up

In a plastic cup so that
She can look at it without

Touching it or harming it.
It flits. She has no desire

To do anything to it.
She just wants to look at it

While her cat prowls something else.
She just wants to know its name,

But wanting to know the name
Is its own kind of desire,

The hunger that lets us in,
The hunger where poems begin.