She only lives long enough to love
once, and lays her eggs in the hours past midnight,
on the undersides of leaves, in a beech grove.

My mother remembers my grandfather, gloved
in midsummer, leaving grape jelly under the porchlight.
She lived long enough to love

one man until he dropped dead in the snow, to move
from the house they shared so she might
sleep under the leaves. In a beech grove

once, I tempted a man, needing to prove
the moon wrong, my tired heart bright
enough to live longer. For love,

the female unfurls, spreads herself over the groove
of wooden steps. She doesn’t eat. In flight,
under beech leaves, in the fragrant grove

of womanhood, she hovers above
the shape of her own evanescence, her want finite
while she lives. I long to leave
the underside of every love I grieve.