Beetles

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

Perhaps they are here to teach us humility,

And that is what so many people
find disturbing about their six legs

And hard casing, and the way they crawl

and fly – Sometimes under the yellowy porch lights

at night. Sometimes in the thick garden. What they read

with antennae, I know, our world-lonely bodies

could never know. This I grasp at as an ache.

They need not adorn themselves. I suspect

the thought of doing so would never cross their

little minds. Why bother? They are the living jewels

sculpted by the very same jeweler we deny,

that we will not give ourselves over to.

We can’t count them. We can’t name them.  Not all of them.

And in this is evidence of our lack of desire for

true intimacy with the living.

We wish to remain strangers from the multitudes.

You cannot convince me otherwise; everywhere you can see

how the backs are turned.

What is this great fear of finding out who we

are through relationship with another?

I think that I must admit this:

I have a love for the stars that course the heavens,

And at least an equal love for the beetles of this earthly plane.

If I can do but one thing and one thing only with

the time I have remaining,

it is to bow my head

and open my heart

to this –

an inordinate fondness for life.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Authore

Published in "Wild Life: New and Selected Poems" 

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