[Note: The following poem was written days ago and was prescheduled. This note was written on 10/1/2020. Marla, my wife was taken to the emergency room today regarding sudden serious problems with her liver. She has Wilson’s Disease. I will be absent from blogging and will not be able to respond to comments. Take care and stay safe. ]
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staring at the soft moon one night
the next hard morning was driving home
past lawyers past schoolgirls
past praying bugs and all alone
like wind-up toys they judge and vote
and next some raking leaves work fast
then eating sleeping peeing dressing
wondering how long life will last
to wake up dead or alive or between
an eternal fleeting poem continues on
scanning eyes from word to word
your story starts with Once upon
to kiss or hate or just sit still
to get to want to follow
while compassion sings the best of all
Beyond self-deception hard to swal
low
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Note: This is a Praying Mantis. She is a female, laden with eggs. Because of the rotten, declining environment, there are fewer Praying Mantises in our area every year. Years ago, we used to see Mantises frequently; now we rarely see any. I found this one in a hospital garden, along a river, that used to have a lot of them. This was the only one that i saw. Fortunately, female Mantises do not need males in order to reproduce; they can produce fertile eggs and young that are exact clones of themselves. (It sure seems like my childhood premonitions about man ruining the environment are, many decades later, turning out to be true.)
