Sitting beside a fire, the poet pleads for a sign

Bumbling out of the night,
something veers near the fire,
wings seared swiftly away;
it squirms in the suburbs of the blaze.

Oh, deathwish beetle,
clutzy buzz of immolation,
hard-backed, inadequate Shadrach . . .

When it stills, I place the shell
on the pyre. Another dives, dies,
smashing into a surrounding stone,
writhes and writhes.