Leaf-eating beetle

This poem, like most of my recent work, grew out of the garden, along with the greens and berries we’re harvesting now.

It entered my kitchen on a turnip leaf:
one round and perfect beetle
that I’d rather not steam
with the evening greens,
black as patent leather, gleaming,
small as a sesame seed
with legs.

Feathery antennae brush
the edge of my finger.
It retreats, knowing better
than to climb on
a pulsing, odiferous,
mountainous thing
that might eat it yet.

I catch it on a scrap
of paper, carry it out
and let it take wing
in my garden, into blue air
shattered by a fighter jet.

Someone young and arrogant
is practicing bombing runs,
practicing spraying other gardeners
and farmers in foreign lands
with Gatling guns.
From that height we all look like bugs.

Next week he’ll be deployed
but now he returns to base,
leaves me in peace but wishing I were less poor,
my powers less feeble,
wishing I could save more
than one small beetle.