Mest leste ▸
Sara Teasdale
We walked in the dew, in the drowsy starlight
To the sleepless, sleepy sound
Of insects singing in the low sea-meadows
For miles and miles around;
With a wheel and a whirr the resistless rhythm
Trembled incessantly;
Antares was red in the sky before us,
And behind us, the blackness of the sea.
The surface tension of water, & how to use it
for nearly effortless walking.
Light without heat: what every glowworm knows.
What it means to be larval,
to have complicated mouthparts
& the sprout-tips of wings.
The secrets of chitin, which imposes limits to growth
through an architect’s dream of fully inhabitable space.
Why snow fleas persist in seeking their fortunes
on the skin of such a cold, white host.
What the inchworm really measures
with its green prostrations.
What this is that we are told
the meek
shall inherit.
All this day looking at the light
and insects
and other creatures to which
I was not little.
insects of smoke
slick as silkworms
weaving their own
winding sheets
a warmish night brings
them out again
those that still chirp
those that still trill
out of sheer habit
by now i suppose
i remember one of
today’s enigmas
i was waved at
by a dead leaf
attached to an unrelated
dead tree
fall colors
a yellowjacket’s
unsteady flight
full moonlight at half strength
due to rain
a slow and seemingly deliberate
tapping on the roof
one of the last warm
end-of-summer nights
katydids singing this is it
this is it this is it
this night with its singular pelage
will never come again
let sleep go on without you
like a zombie apocalypse
flying squirrels open
the dark sails of their bodies
a spring peeper calls three times
in defiance of the season
a wasp on foot
the nervous trembling
of her wings
Seeing the almost bare trees as antennae—intelligence-gathering stations for an alien umwelt, the rococo feelers of moths.
lonesome hollow
speaking softly so the void
doesn’t reply
What I miss most of all in the colder months: beetles and butterflies, crickets at night, and those delicate ninjas the ichneumon wasps. The way they tap the ground with paired canes, sniffing, listening.
unmarked path
a stick leaning on a tree
for the next hiker
just one drink
catching a cranefly
in mid-air
how many months now
since I’ve held someone
missing you
the morning after
a hard frost
breath measured out
in small white clouds
buzzing
what the rattlesnake sees
in infrared
ah just to touch
that velvety skin
floating leaves
The soft notes
of a blue-headed vireo
lure me away from my desk.
Night’s dust on my glasses
turns to a veil of gauze
in the noon-time sun.
The stench of manure
wafts up from the valley.
The vireo snatches insects from the air.
The first warm day.
The mountain hums with insects
and the valley with motorcycles.
Between twists of old coyote scat
and dried grass curled
tight as pubic hair,
close to the ground, the trailing
arbutus’ fragrant parts
begin to open.
A few degrees above freezing,
and already the first gnats
have come back to life.
Insects have mastered
the most immaculate lifelessness,
deader than any corpse:
even ice
with its many knives
never gets a chance to grow.