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Per Diem Archive: C. H. Day January 2013, Insects

Insects and Arachnids: the humble and splendid creatures that take us by surprise.

Almost every young child is captivated by insects and spiders, those little dramas that go on around us. Then usually by the end of grade school most of us lose interest and these creatures are no longer our playmates. / borrowing my hut / from fleas and mosquitoes / I sleep / (1814) Issa (1763-1827) translated by David G. Lanoue. Issa never lost his fascination with insects. Out of the 10,000 haiku translations by David G. Lanoue uploaded to the Haiku of Kobayashi Issa website, 52 are about fleas. And like Issa the following poets have written about all sorts of insects and spiders. This Per Diem is a chance to rediscover: the click of a deathwatch beetle, the taste of hive in the honey, and the architecture of a just spun web. We again visit with water striders, praying mantises, dragonflies, crickets, and maybe even a lowly flea.

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Author: Robert Clayton Spiess
No wind 
  the chrysalis 
       trembles 
Author: Nick Virgilio
bass  
picking bugs 
off the moon
Author: Renée Owen
passing ants touch antennae  i travel alone 
Author: LeRoy Gorman
fireblackfly
Author: Eve Luckring
comin’ for 
to carry me… 
a night of moths
Author: Merle D. Hinchee
church cemetery 
a wasp starts its nest 
in Mary’s hand
Author: Peggy Willis Lyles
she lifts one child— 
the underwater years 
of dragonflies
Author: Paul Pfleuger, Jr.
capturing a butterfly the American in me 
Author: Marlene Mountain
one fly everywhere the heat
Author: paul m. (Paul Miller)
returning body bags 
my DNA 
in a mosquito
Author: Stanford M. Forrester
dog shit 
or me 
the fly doesn’t care
Author: Peter Yovu
word of his death 
bees streaming out of a hole 
in my dictionary
Author: Ted van Zutphen
an ant  
carries more than its weight—  
morning prayer
Author: Melissa Allen
water strider— 
I still don’t believe 
in miracles
Author: Mark Harris
a pupa breaks down the lure of a quick fix 
Author: Yu Chang
just enough  
to leave an impression 
firefly
Author: Jack Galmitz
Watching butterflies 
The two sides 
Of my brain
Author: John Martone
spiderling 
 yr cocoon 
 my manuscript
Author: Elizabeth Searle Lamb
a new hearing aid: 
adjusting it, she tunes in 
on crickets
Author: Helen Buckingham
night spiders armed with red pens
Author: Marje A. Dyck
the smell  
of a crushed beetle 
the things that don’t change
Author: Robert Epstein
white butterfly  
I’m also ready  
to surrender
Author: John McManus
father asks  
if it’s time to go —  
cricket song
Author: Jennie Townsend
more thunder  
ants do ant things  
to the peonies
Author: Billie Wilson
potluck picnic 
we each bring our own 
swarm of gnats
Author: Scott Metz
the war awakens the face of an insect in the mirror
Author: Carolyn Hall
her side of the argument— 
ants spill out 
of the prodded lizard
Author: Fay Aoyagi
his latest lies 
eye to eye 
with a praying mantis
Author: Ferris Gilli
power failure 
a deathwatch beetle 
clicks in the wall
Author: Cindy Zackowitz
a mosquito 
caught in my hair— 
scent of pine
Author: Marjorie Buettner
dark of the moon 
the flavor of the hive 
in the honey
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