While Walking
These mosquitoes follow
flitting in frenzy
always just an inch away
from my fevered tips
a swarm stalling my steps
around each street bend
should I wait for them--
those who lie in wait
to finish with their haunting
if there is no end
I am giving up now
my high strung swatting
is futile movement--
a need to covet solitude
and their need—
an unappeased thirst
but what else is left
to suck from a carcass
roaming down the side
of a barren road
are they only here
to remind me
how far I am from home
and that even this moment
walking alone disrupting dry air
is not mine
that this world is too full of things
all too full of need
These mosquitoes follow
flitting in frenzy
always just an inch away
from my fevered tips
a swarm stalling my steps
around each street bend
should I wait for them--
those who lie in wait
to finish with their haunting
if there is no end
I am giving up now
my high strung swatting
is futile movement--
a need to covet solitude
and their need—
an unappeased thirst
but what else is left
to suck from a carcass
roaming down the side
of a barren road
are they only here
to remind me
how far I am from home
and that even this moment
walking alone disrupting dry air
is not mine
that this world is too full of things
all too full of need
Wayne Benson is a poet and freelance writer from Easton, Pennsylvania. He is currently earning his MFA from the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University. Wayne is also the poetry editor at River and South Review and is in the process of drafting his first collection of poems.