Saturday, March 24, 2007

Bird Ten: Ladybug Season

Now that I no longer "have to" write about red, I suddenly have something red to say...
My home blooms ladybugs for many weeks every March.

Ladybug Season
Our lives are littered with ladybugs –
a friendly plague emerging with each spring.
You gamely try to rescue every one.

Appearing in loose huddles along
the window sills, forming speckled
tableaus on the crown molding,

tracing invisible trails along the
lampshade seams and shutter slats,
searching for each other, for the way out.

I am their salty goddess. Never does
one fail to scale my offered fingertip,
to skate a ticklish path along my palm.

I will encounter their remains for months –
freshly wincing at each bitter carcass
crunching underfoot.

How I miss them already. Sad, dead
spotted things – forever crawling
when they had the chance to fly.


Image source: http://www.cirrusimage.com/beetles_multicolored_Asian_ladybird.htm


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes.. I do love those last lines. There's more to this poem ready to be mined. I'll be back.

Anonymous said...

I love "I am their salty goddess" and the last line, so so much! They are out over here as well - all over. In fact, to keep them company I am going to add the egg sac of a preying mantis. I think like, a hundred little mantis come out of there.

I also noticed you have angry alien in your linklings - I am very fond of the bunnies doing brokeback mountain!

Anonymous said...

sorry -that wasn't anonymous, that was me...had a computer breakdown for a second there!