the june bug on my porch

 

While lively green moths

and papery powder-white ones

flutter around the lightbulb in a kind of midsummer orgy,

the june bug walks the porch floor alone,

stopping now and again to wave its front legs in the air

and lift its head as if sniffing. It walks blindly, alone,

following a bearing neither of us can see;

body heavy and lumbering, a bug

that crashes into window screens and thuds off walls,

clumsy and endearing.

Resolutely it plods along the cement floor, blind

to the daddy long legs that now strides across its path,

blind to the crane flies in the air,

to the spiders behind the door,

the earwig in the cushions –

blind to me, writing about insects on my porch

as my own neighbor walks by on the sidewalk

and the purple evening fades to dark.