Ars Poetica: Below the Wolf Pine

by David Rams

A grasshopper dropped into the open
garden shed and hobbled over plywood
to the closest shaded corner. It crept
so painfully slow I could see a leg
missing from its mottled thorax before
it snuck behind a round-mouth shovel blade.
I wondered what this five-legged insect
could mean, if anything, but resisted
the urge to pull back the shovel and stare
into its dappled eyes. Leave it alone,
I told myself, and did for many days.
When I finally looked, it had vanished
until I saw it here, depositing
a frothy egg pod in this poem’s soil.