Exquisite Playmates

Outside, it’s an insect the length of a heavy fist,
Colliding with hot tin; with a clamor,
A sound much like a snowball impacting,
Tossing slush and gristle; and the smell of onion,
But it’s a humid evening and,
The smell of mesquite on fire,
Makes the reek of insect death,
Seem like burning hairs.

The cat prowls the thud,
Back; like stone bridges with wheat grass atop,
Stoic in the line of sight,
Of legs instinctively flittering,
And wings crushed under a pâté of gray juices,
A head gyrating like our mammal heartbeats,
I’m making eye contact with the kitten as he ponders on haunches,
Each as unsure as the other.

It’s like an ugly fallen bird,
A finch with beetle like pinchers, proboscis,
A once eager feeder upon suckled honeydew flowers,
Or perhaps shunting its million little eggs into heaps of florid dung,
Each a near asexual replication,
Of such a tropical specimen of carapaced beast.

The cat and I,
Exchanging casual steps towards the felled giant,
That in a world less robotic,
Could have been an acrobat with feathers,
But stands in its own acrid puddle,
Outside a hot garage door,
Sporting a ding the girth of a pebble,
From a speeding brazen antennae.

From above the squashed goliath,
Our heads, one primate, one feline,
Draw shadows over an airborne predator,
With bristled legs and clamping hands,
Like a sun charred king crab,
That muscles through the midnight air,
On a nautili principle,
And tossing headlong into fate.

The kitten dares not sniff,
Not here to assess the wiggling,
I think we are here to ponder death,
It’s a human-less death,
That smells like vinegar and ash,
Of a big vigorous body that I can imagine chasing,
A million tender butterflies, or licked up ants.

The cat turns hesitantly and breathes a sniff,
I imagine it is a sigh,
An exhale that signified a dissatisfaction,
That the hose has to come again out so soon,
To wash the spider down,
To smear the oiled guts off crackled pavement,
To push the still squirming shell,
With sterile streams,
Into an fire ant nest,
To be chewed thoughtfully,
Like so much new searing meat,
Sating little bug bellies,
As the kitten and I sit in the shade,
And silently with staring eyes, ponder death…