Carriage Lamp with Wasps

Besting woodpeckers who fray the tarred tips of phone poles, 
a globe topping tin pipe makes a stylized lollipop. 

All day, sweetness is light. 
Fat caterpillars work the curved white field 

like little tractors, smoothing and smoothing, 
while an anole patrols his unmedieval keep, 

bells orange at the throat when wasps probe a gap 
where the plastic won't clamp to the lamp's dented collar. 

Why shouldn't they build their papery babies 
where they can't be broomed? By day 

it would be like living in a dirigible, 
warm and dreamy. But at night, when lilies 

who all afternoon resembled women singing 
with their arms up can no longer be found 

(though the whole yard's gone looking) 
and we tremble to touch what we know only by feel, 

then something will sting the globe awake. 
And then it would be like tricking the moon 

into shaping from within an insomniac face 
every brute down the street tries to serenade.