🇬🇧 Tanbark Beetle

🇬🇧 Tanbark Beetle

661.   She who has seen a tanbark beetle
       Is a lucky critter:
       Wingcovers are shiny bluish-green.
       Long, segmented antennas,
       A full bodylenght long
       Finely balanced down and across
       Bulging black droplets of muscle
       On reddish upper thighs,
       Brownish-yellow thorax
       And a small black head.

662.   We experience in glimpses
       We see in sequences
       Few seconds in duration.
       Our attention 
       Is mostly blind.
       But now and the
       The moment is propituous
       And we see; really see.

663.   The tanbark beetles is there
       Suddenly among the logs,
       Completely alive, shy,
       But not afraid.
       Just watchfull.
       Half a minute
       And she scurries off;
       Finds shelter and lays eggs
       In my stack of firewood.

664.   I relish the moment.
       A small performance
       In the unending variation
       Of insect- and beetlelife.

665.   Life is expansive
       And my empathy with beetles
       Has grown a little.
       This is what I call
       An expanded day.

666.   I add the barkborers name
       To the common mailbox
       Of species on my lot.
       A pedestrian passes by, looks,
       Asks me: “Tell me, what’s that, will ya.
       I reply: “Awh, just practical biophilia.