Tags
insect
before the invention of electric light
insects had no place to gather
in search of futilities such as hope
and illumination
nowhere but volcanoes and lightning strikes
and eventually campfires and candles
tended in the primitive night
by beasts who had barely evolved
brutes who had never met the first animal to fly
who never conquered the sky
until 400 million years too late
to wrest the crown from that devonian pilot
the one to first discover
she possessed two wings
to carry her farther
than six legs ever could
after 80 million years of crawling
and evolving from her crustacean roots
living without the scent of flowers
or primates for millions more
remember this under your porch light
and your desolate parking lots at 3 a.m.
remember this in your isolated rooms
where sunlight never penetrates
remember five million centuries of yearning
for a place to swarm and burn completely
and in that brief flash before dying
tell an ancient story written with buzzing wings
outlined with spiky keratinous hairs
and split into paragraphs like segmented carapaces
stories you could never understand
unless you too had lived in darkness
.
