INSECTS

No, not with you or any of my kind,

But with a pair of coupling dragonflies,

Spindles gun-blue with wings of filmy black,

Will I embalm the last shreds of my mind.

Let chrevroned grasshoppers in full green dress

Parade in chaos where my body lies

To show me off, and I'll salute them back

While overflights of butterflies impress

The spies among the reeds. Oh, let me take

My leave of water striders as they row

To keep their station, court in ripples, make

Quick, bright-ringed shadows on the rock below,

And fireflies, dancing on the edge of night,

Flashing their itch against the fading light.

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: I wish I had never been born -- but who has such luck? Not one in ten thousand. :||