Bourgeon

HICKORY TUSSOCK MOTH CATERPILLAR
lophocampa caryae

We are replete with caterpillars this year,
mostly of the woolly bear variety,
but today I saw one covered
in thick white hairs and trimmed
with a rickrack of black dots.

It made such elegant geometry
cresting a blade of grass, each dot
a dorsal tuft rising and falling.
The dead don’t need our forgiveness.
Despite my mother’s elaborate theories

about healing the pieces of their souls,
their fragile bones awaiting
the metamorphosis, she’s dead now too.
The hell with her theories. Here in the woods
the caterpillar does its job, which is eating

the leaves of hardwood trees,
with a miraculous single-mindedness.
The long white hairs poke through
chiton, and if you touch them
a painful rash will erupt on your hands

and any place on your body
where you put your hands. In that way,
the caterpillar reminds you of your pitiful
childhood and all the things you learned
to forgive in exchange for future wings.

THE DEATH-WATCH BEETLE
Xestoblium rufovillosum

Edgar Allen Poe called it
a low, dull quick sound,
such as a watch makes

when enveloped in cotton.
In the rafters of old homes,
it taps its head again, again,

against the oak: tick-tick-tick.
Jonathan Swift wrote:
Then woe be to those

in the house who are sick.
Many a roof
has turned to powder.

The small circles,
entry and exit holes,
are packed with frass,

the residue of hardwood
chewed down to dust.
The beams of Westminster Abbey

were riddled with holes, in danger
of imminent collapse.
The Bodleian Library’s

magnificent ceiling was lost.
In this country too, the beetles live
up to seven years

destroying houses, cathedrals, libraries,
a thousand clocks clicking
all night long,

the vigil of the Grim Reaper
drumming bony fingers,
the insistent teeth of time.

PRAYING MANTIS
Mantis religiosa

Tapered celadon wings
held perfectly still;
the plot does not advance
save for the occasional gnat,

the sporadic spider
held perfectly still
in two praying arms.
I can’t save the occasional gnat

who shares this small square drama,
the sporadic spider
on my window screen.
In two praying arms

held fetal and close,
who shares the small square? Drama
unfolds imperceptibly
on my window screen.

Autumn unrolls. Its sentence
is held fetal and close:
death comes too soon,
unfolds imperceptibly

its tapered celadon wings.
Autumn unrolls this sentence.
The plot barely advances—
and death comes too soon.

Kim Roberts is the editor of the anthology By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book for the 2021 Route 1 Reads program as the book that “best illuminates important aspects” of the culture of Washington, DC. She is the author of A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018), and five books of poems, most recently The Scientific Method (WordTech Editions, 2017). Her chapbook, Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere, is forthcoming from WordTech Editions in 2023. http://www.kimroberts.org

Image: Gilles San Martin, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

You Choose

Say you studied hard to understand the body,
so hard that its ailments were no longer a mystery.
Say you kept cures in jars behind the counter
on apothecary shelves with the rarest highest,
plucked from the shores of the River Liao,
Mount Kenya’s pockets, tresses of the Amazon.
Women would line up early, murmuring symptoms;
the men would arrive after sunset, caps pulled low.
After all, it’s a living, you might tell yourself,
selling elixirs for real problems, fertility tonics,
poison for neighbors who won’t respect limits —
like that poor poet who squats by the door
in front of your shop and types with two fingers
on an old Olivetti, wringing problems of the soul.

Finale

The danseur, himself
a glissando
glides toward
the deft display of
made-up grace
that is the coryphée.

He leaps to every key.
Timpani thrum
as he gathers his weight,
propels it in air
and holds there, a fermata
above his own jeté;

I too, hold — my breath,
half a century gone by —
dancers ever young,
but not I, not I, until
he lands, intact
and I let myself exhale

clapping, as he steps
to lift her high in this
mauve and sequined
moment of ballet,
nearing an end which
disbelief suspends

Francophilia

I’m anxious the moment I land in Paris, anxious my visit will end.

In the womb, I must already have missed this Paris one can’t possess,

my father must have whispered je t’aime, cheekbone pressed

against mama’s stretched skin, and I heard him, tawny buildings

of the 16th leaning in and breathing so close to me, gentled lions.

Yes, he must have reminisced as I walked the walls of the womb,

about his first wife, a countess who later married rich, lived in Paris,

had as many shoes as a willow has leaves; he must have played

Debussy’s Réverie as my patient mother leaned against the spinet,

one arm cradled under the baby bump of me, and sighed a sigh

like a cliché puff of smoke in a monochrome print where a student

at the Sorbonne, glasses and bangs obscuring her eyes, reaches

toward her pimpled lover over a café table, her future unfurling.

Lora Berg writes with a light touch, sometimes on difficult topics. She has published a collaborative book with visual artist Canute Caliste, as well as poems in Shenandoah, Colorado Review and The Carolina Quarterly, etc. She served as a Poet-in-Residence at the Saint Albans School and holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins. Among hats, Lora has served as Cultural Attaché at U.S. Embassies abroad and lived in several countries. Lora is a proud mom and grandma.

Image:bex73, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

new chairs

i didn’t expect white
but i knew black was out
maybe natural wood

anything to replace
the worn out and breaking
cane-bottomed kitchen chairs

chairs that had lasted
far beyond expectation
holding on, like me. holding on

when she found new chairs
online, of course, she said
these are the ones, but

you will have to assemble them
and i thought to myself
i’ve put so many things together

what’s four more chairs
prefab and requiring only a
screwdriver and included wrench

done in no time, and the old chairs,
faithful to the end, were cut apart
to fit the garbage can

no funeral, no eulogy, and almost
no regret, except for a twinge
as i sawed through the last leg

wondering what might become of me
when i am old past usefulness
but not ready to give in

check up

i tell him i had covid almost a year ago
he nods and says yes, it’s in my record

he asks what my concerns are, though that
is in the secure message i sent him days ago

we talk. or at least, i complain, he listens
easy fatigue, no stamina, vertigo, lack of focus

i thought he was listening, but he asks instead
about my depression and if the medication helps

yes, yes, i tell him, it works, but these symptoms
started long before the blues, so no. not that.

and then it starts. ekg, treadmill stress test
pulmonary function test, vials and vials of blood

every test, every sample, every result comes back
i’m in good shape for an old coot, and yet

the symptoms are still there. walk a block
in a mask and stop to huff, puff, and rest

climb one flight of stairs, pant for breath
nothing gets better, nothing gets easier

so what’s an old geezer to do when the check up says
i’m fine, but my body disagrees. what’s next?
what is coming next?

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, nurse practitioner, and Editor of Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal and community. When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California. He is the author of four full length collections and several chapbooks. https://www.jlewisweb.com/books.asp

Image: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons