- Non-Erotic Poetry
- The Secret Life of Beetles
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All winter they manifest at the corner
Of the eye, their spindles
Aquiver, a pinprick rhythm of
Footfalls like nothing human;
Nothing and then
Suddenly this dun beetle picking its way
Across my stuccoed ceiling; strange
As a throat lozenge perched on a plate
Of mashed potatoes.
It became almost a duty to crush them,
Their satin sheen crackled
Into guts and gasoline stink.
Without death they were
Nothing, so many jointed legs, a carapace;
It was the coming back,
The endless, grinding, lilliputian will
To be reborn that made the miracle
In my bedroom corner.
What genesis of Nile mud,
Lint and cat hair and crumpled tissues
Spawned these fry?
What rug pile metropolis, what civilization
Offensive to man
Sends forth its single spies to crawl
And look down on us,
And placidly to die?
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