A June bug lay, as though collapsed,
on the path of straw beside the patch
of young potato plants and I thought
it a wonderful way to die.
It finished its night’s lumbering
flight and while the new day was
but a whisper of light beyond the trees,
the June bug lay its body down,
and joined with last year’s crumbling straw,
and the prayer that is June bug essence will
be taken into the earth, and loved
and transformed and they will continue.

Unbidden came a thought about my eventual burial –
with my body left to its sad mouldering
in a solid box from which I envision no escape,
and how therefore I would never join
the Junebug or the straw
in their remembering of a morning in
the garden with the sunshine and the green
rosettes of young potato leaves.

As my mood dipped toward self-pity, a
barbed leg trembled, straw tipped,
the shiny carapace of a heavy body
pulled forward, and perhaps I heard
a snort of ridicule, June bug style.

June 2016