Spared – a poem by Laura Hannett

Spared


Three Japanese beetles cluster on the rose
to patiently strip the leaves to the veins. 

A jar of soapy water means 
nothing to them. When I pluck them, 

they cling meekly to my fingers
with thorny legs, as if I were safe.
  
One, two, three—I toss them 

high, up high, tumbling through an abrupt puzzle
of garden, house and sky. 

At the peak of the arc,
each is transfixed against the blue, 

remembers it has wings,
and, unthinking, flies. 

They believe in nothing—not in me, 
an almighty power barely perceived, already forgotten—

not even in being spared: getting cast from the garden 
just one dizzying surprise in a day of chaos. 

They will eat and mate and eat again—
pests, yet beautiful:
 
shining, coppery elytra, 
pronotum dark, metallic jade. 

They are the peacock plume of oil 
on gleaming pavement after rain.

A native of Central New York, Laura Hannett is a graduate of Hamilton College and the College of William and Mary. She works as a licensed massage therapist and writes every morning before her family wakes up, under the strict supervision of her cats. Other work can be found or is slated to appear in The Bluebird Word, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Mania Magazine, Verse-Virtual and Black Bough Poetry.