-This poem reflects on mosquito hour as one of high summer’s small intrusions, when evening softness is interrupted by the persistent nearness of living hunger.
Just as the light begins to thin,
they rise from grass and shaded leaves,
small needles in the evening air,
drawn close where warmth and stillness meet.
The porch grows watchful in that time,
hands brush the ankle, neck, and wrist,
while somewhere past the darkening hedge,
the last bird gives itself to dusk.
No cruelty makes these tiny wings,
just hunger working through the heat,
the same old summer claim on flesh,
the body counted as belonging.
So much of high summer lives here,
not only in ease, but in intrusion,
the hour made tender, then disturbed,
by life insisting on its share.