Mountaintop Experience

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He'd scaled three hundred pages of this mesa,
my open prayer book. Hesitant,
he probed the margin with antennae.

Hauling up wings and thorax long as this ---
and abdomen --- he made a dash
across the psalm like a Hebrew scholar

right to left between the lines
  O Lord I am not proud
escaping? searching?
  I have no haughty looks
Reversed, he climbed the ridge amid
  great matters and things that are too hard for me

and aimed his tiny caravan
towards a shadowy valley -- of death, if I chose
to close the book

I carried like a tray out to the deck.
With no more breath than, say, amen,
I sent him to the world in peace.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I've not found another insect like the one I describe in this poem, neither in my home nor online. - WSS