Her Last Garden

Late tomato, least onion,
cold remainder, worthless thing,

lovers who populate and disappear
the world, tell me

before I drink forgetfulness from the river,
how can a woman

who beat the silhouette of a burglar
from her curtain with a broom

succumb to a bright
shadow on an x-ray

when, on her garden wall,
in the last light birds erase

from the air, Polyphemus moths,
big as two hands, open?