TO SUFFER (OR TO BE FREED)
June 22, 2008 12:23 PM
The June bugs begin to die in mass in Michigan.
And they seem to wish to die a particularly
Tragic death.
They die upside down, on the ground.
Their mighty, thick and round, brown bean bodies
Flitter and buzz
And make quite a commotion
For such a little creature.
They like to die loudly.
An entire backyard lawn, garden
Or a piece of lakefront property
Will fall still and listen
To somewhere, out there,
The little beans rattling to death,
Grasping at the air with its antennae legs,
Begging for more time
From the tipped over world.
If you find one, which I have,
By chasing the commotion
With a pocket flashlight
While drunk, happy and sunburned,
The temptation is great to help them live
By flipping them back, right-side up,
At least to give them a chance to see July.
But this is a mistake.
It is ritual you upset.
They’d prefer to die screaming,
By themselves,
Grounded,
Useless
And upside down,
Devoured alive by pain,
Ants, blades of grass
And daddy long legs.
They want the owls to know.
One June bug that I found and flipped to help,
Took to flight, to my pleasure,
Only to nose dive
Directly and quickly, with a distinct
“Pffffffff.”
Into the hot coals of my campfire.
But during that split-second “pffffffff” of eternity
I wondered if his entire June life
Had scrolled before his eyes:
The sugar roots of the daffodils
Upon which he climbed into the first Earth night.
The first moment his wings sprung to life
And drew him toward the milk of a full moon.
The silk of screen doors and screen windows
Lit with evening sounds of card playing inside.
The chorus of frogs singing from a swamp.
A meadow of lightning bugs spinning like a new universe.
A lover waiting for him
On the rain-softened bark of a Maple tree
Then, watching her fall
And crawl away
Into the soft grave
Of another year, another June.
Perhaps he nibbled upon a leaf and drank the dew,
Remembering her.
No.
All of this was too much for a mere moment-
To turn him upright
And watch him fly into the fire,
Was not right.
His, was a long ache desired.
by Bob Trezise who is the CEO of LEAP, (Lansing Economic Area Partnership). By day he deals with acronyms and attracting new business to the Lansing area; by night he writes poetry. Bob’s poetry is reminiscent of another Michiganian Theodore Roethke who had an uncanny attraction to the natural world.
