Member Poem

While straightening the tail end of October,
  
I step across my rug
  
of turf and see a bug

as slender as a drinking straw, a sober

pea-green, and unassuming as a nun.
  
Perhaps she is entreating
  
the god who has been heating

her body the whole summer not to run

away and strip the trees too rapidly
  
and leave her in a blizzard.
  
Now, basking like a lizard,

she doesn’t try to flee but studies me

with eyes that nearly dwarf her swivel-head.
  
I stroke her back. She races
  
away. Yet what she faces

is not my finger but the milky spread

that, by and by, will glaciate this lawn.
  
She stops as if she’s caught
  
my thought. Now on this plot

she’ll ambush flies till she and they are gone.

When will the mandibles of winter take
  
her spirit like some prey?
  
Who knows? But now, today,

she’ll revel in the sun—until I rake.

(Appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.)