Five Meditations on the Praying Mantis on my Doorstep (poetry)
Five Meditations on the Praying Mantis on my Doorstep
Grasshoppers madly hop about,
trying to gather wisdom:
the mantis remains wiser still.
Like a miniature jade Buddha,
wings folded along his slim abdomen
the mantis considers
Why I am on his doorstep.
Once my children opened my eyes
to the wonders of a mantis in our garden.
Ten years later, they are teens:
and the mantis prays alone.
On the night the mantis stopped upon my doorstep,
one also visited the porch of an acquaintance across town.
I ponder annunciations, signs.
A hoard of grasshoppers eating northern crops
Became headline news.
One praying mantis on the porch
Became this poem.