Mantis Eggs in Autumn
The praying mantis pays
no homage to great mammal king Pan.
The cat’s tap can’t pry
her metallic ladder arms
into unfolding, or scare her from
a grip on her grass rope.
She is indifferent to the rose
petal and to the thorn.
Mantis is an agent only
to the god of buried sweetness,
Hades. She feasts in the velvet
belly of the bee.
Mantis is ready. She has
exhaled her house of ghosts.
Come October, the first hook
of dark mother winter
won’t gain purchase
on her pale burnished mind.
