By D.R. James
PROMPT — Ask Me.
A dingy ladybug just slammed
into this split-ended web of grass
as if shot from an organic cannon
for a miniature net. Nonplussed,
she has seemed to decide
to climb to its frizzy top
and fling herself,
to no applause whatsoever,
toward the sharp tip of a taller,
naked shaft nearby—
there, to re-form and sway
in the slightest breeze.
I say she has seemed, because
I don’t know whose life it is,
anyway. It’s all about me,
of course: earlier,
I found myself atop
a mental mountain (you know,
surveying the lesser peaks?),
then flung myself for this poem,
fluttering into the snare
of choosing this or going with that
as if I determined all my decisions
all along the live-long day.
But I know me: soon enough
I’ll fold my wings
to re-form a spotted shell,
and it will seem I’ve decided
to head down that one long blade,
then, to no applause, up another.
Recently retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, D.R. James lives, writes, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres, 2021), and his work appears internationally in many print and online anthologies and journals.