With that lime green hairnet
commonly used by butterfly dispatchers--
something your aunt might have commandeered
to put her hair up donkey's years ago,
I unjarred the bottle of air &
with a pair of forceps
tried to wrangle the life juices
from a Polyphemeus[1] in a manner akin to Ulysses
in that cave three millenia ago;
his gentle bleating like the whine
of the net across the gelatin fabric
of air or the flash of a tomahawk gliding
across Custer's golden hair.
[1] Large buff silk-moth with two eyespots on the hind wings named for
the giant Polyphemeus in the Odyssey. Ulysses had the giant blinded
with a sharpened pole.