National Poetry Month

[brigdh]

Beetles - Siddhartha Menon

I have an affection
for the larger black beetles,
bulbous, gauche: I think I sympathize.

They are out of sorts
on surfaces, contrive to be lost in empty dustbins,
are seldom on an even keel.

They flounder anywhere- on clods,
on cement, and topple
quicker than a house of cards.

They are so much upon their backs, so
helpless as they claw
air, such easy meat.

You flip them right: they grope,
poise themselves and whir like helicopters.
They do not cling to redemption.

Are they meant to be like this? There must
be a realm where every act
isn't the tragic-comic one-

where touchstones are less clear, the walls
less near. Not for surfaces,
yet there they are, rising and blundering,

there they are being flipped.
At times I see them pause, then burrow
impatiently, boring in.