Bless the hive that cannot be pried
that skep of clay that denies
every Pandora her urge
so to teach us to accept mystery
and its limits.

I wrote a poem I hoped was
equal to the manuscript, slippery
and migratory as eels,
a manuscript that spawns desire,
not knowledge, origin stories,
border crossings, scientific
hypotheses, and cultural projections.  

I tried anagrams, concealed revelation
in plain sight.  Six sections, like the text.
We lean on structure, when meaning falters.
From the Astronomical:
Aleatory suns transit remarkable orb-bellied nudes
(ovulating/menstruating), iconical colliding
aberrations of Leda’s light.

I found myself trapped, so tried another tack
with section two, The Baleological.  I asked
the dear reader to conjure images: Cezanne’s
bathers, Mme. Bonnard’s tub, Kenneth Anger’s
Eauxd’ Artifice —

I went on and on, trapped like those poor
Shakespeare doubters.  (Bacon. Roger Bacon, the author?
The owner? Wasn’t another Bacon involved in another ruse -
perhaps the author of Shakespeare’s plays? Kevin Bacon’s
sister was in a class I taught – 6 degrees…. The number 6!)

Walking home from a Covid - 19 test, I find an ID
card in the street, I look up and see
the manuscript has wings, it is a moth.  
I take a picture, and after days of looking for a match,  
I learn the moth is a Lettered Sphinx –Deidamia Inscriptum,
Riddles inside of riddles, threads to follow
like atoms splitting in infinite directions.  
Obsession is greater than knowledge.