an ode to sunlight & the humanity of inhuman things
a quarantine poem
last autumn, when the leaves fell
I let them lay where they fall
not because I am lazy, and an acre is a lot to rake,
and not because I am disinclined to care
about what my lawn looks like
(though, understand, both of these things are true)
I let them lay where they fall
in the hopes that their decomposition
would enrich the earth
where I hoped to grow food in the spring
how very human of me
to consider only what I could gain
from another thing’s death
but–
what I did not account for were the bugs
the boxelder bug, small and black and red-striped,
is named for the boxelder maple tree,
amongst whose detritus they breed
and build and live and thrive
the boxelder bug is what we consider a pest species
because its existence does not serve what we consider a purpose,
and they are not easy to get rid of
once they have claimed a space as theirs,
for they are resilient and many–
how human, how human
some generations of boxelder bug live
just through the winter,
bursting into and out of existence
just long enough to live through the hardest season,
never sticking around long enough to see
the bloom of the leaves
whose death sustains them–
how human, how human
the boxelder bug is what we consider a pest species
because on sunny days they emerge from the earth
and they gather in the sunlight wherever they can,
because the squirming mass of them
leaves the dirt in search of warmth, of survival–
how human, how human
who am I
to snuff out a life because
I don’t care to see its existence?
to condemn the existence of a creature
which I only know exists
because it climbed up out of the dirt
in order to face the sun?
who among us
isn’t just looking for the soft warmth
of the sun to remind us that we are alive?
that we were ever here at all?
