ALARMING BEAUTY OF THE SKY, THE

Still Life with Insects

15 Still Life with Insects The katydids are clicking in the dust. I once compared them to Kandinsky’s green, When one came in the kitchen, and we watched Its strutting legs complexly climb the screen. Afterwards, I went to the museum, And bought a postcard, showing what I meant About the open-heartedness of colors (Time seemed much slower then, and lighter spent). Today a blue-black wasp works arduously. It scoops a gravel nursery lined with dung, Abducts and seals within, a sleeping spider— An incubator-wet nurse for its young. This happens in the patio while I light A smoke; my breath, exhaled, shifts with the breeze, Uncertainly away . . . and back to me. The evening haze is lingering in the trees And in the pathless canyon. Near my foot A silver bee hoards pollen in its hole— While night, the other shoe, falls on us all With ash-gray mothwings pressed against its sole. ...