Eric Colburn

Cabin in the woods
 
The flies inside the paper lantern trace
a line along the bamboo frame that leads
nowhere—or, back to where they started. Beads
of black inside the bright-lit lantern's face,
they seem to represent my thoughts; they race
in frantic, desperate, aimless rounds—like seeds
unable to find fertile ground, or weeds
cut down… For when they do escape, my mace
of rolled-up paper smashes them against
whatever wall they think they're lucky to
have landed on. Were they thinking that?
Were they, when they walked the lantern's endlessness fenced
in light, scared of death like me and you—
or were they happy, before I smashed them flat?

Eric Colburn works as a high school teacher in the Boston area, where he lives with his family and rides his bicycle everywhere. His poems have appeared in Appalachia, THINK Journal, Blue Unicorn, and many other places.