The hallways sprawl in endless beige-
each room reeks of ethanoled age.
Our guide, John, with his streaks of gray,
expertly lists each species contained
in row after row of archived decay.
After gawking at beetles, ants, and bees,
John waltzes us to Lepidoprta’s Wing.
This is my order of expertise, he winks.
But there’s too much to see,
which is why I hand-picked
the most surreal and eye-catching.
We follow him to a slim cabinet marked
“Oh My!” in messy scrawl.
Then, we exclaim the phrase repeatedly
at wings like woven shawls.
How convenient for us visitors
to pass the mundane most
and awe at cobalt specimens
or those moon-glow green-like ghosts.
If only there were an “Oh My!” Box
in every hall of life,
to bypass bore and tedium
to skip the shelves of strife.
But soon, John moves on
from the vibrant few
and ushers us to another room.
And here is my research group!
Wall after wall of moths so small
we must squint to decipher their contours.
They’re tiny brown blots, but John starts to talk
like they’re Morphos or swallow-tailed wonders.
Their significance is in the data,
he thumbs through graphs and charts.
If we can’t keep their broods in check,
they’ll bore through a whole nation’s crops.
“Oh My!” we exclaim, far more engaged
than we were by the dazzling box.
pm poetry 