THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE
One without looks in to-night
…Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white,
One without looks in to-night
…As we sit and think
…By the fender-brink.
We do not discern those eyes
…Watching in the snow,
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
…Wondering, aglow,
…Fourfooted, tiptoe.
-Thomas Hardy
THE PRAYING MANTIS
From whence arrived the praying mantis?
From outer space, or lost Atlantis?
I glimpse the grim, green metal mug
That masks this pseudo-saintly bug,
Orthopterous, also carnivorous,
And faintly whisper, Lord deliver us.
-Ogden Nash
In the U.K. they are coming to the end of Insect Week, sponsored by the Royal Entomological Society. (But in this post I am showing only my own photos of California insects.) I heard about Insect Week from Blogger Katie, whose butterfly embroideries I have admired for a while at ArtyMissK. Her photography is fantastic, too; by it she reveals here the glory of a “simple” black Dor beetle, and many other examples. Have a look at these “Little Things That Run the World”:
IN PRAISE OF SELF-DEPRECATION
The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.
The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.
The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.
-Wislawa Szymborska
Gladsome Lights 