I believed in love and the bugs splayed dead
across the windshield as we drove home,
our teenage nights all impact: moths, gnats, ladybugs
flattened by the speed of my boyfriend’s Mustang —
the survivors orbiting dizzy in the haze around streetlights.
Xerces blue butterfly, Saint Helena earwig,
Central Valley grasshopper: all gone forever.
Those who count say there are fewer of most insects now.
Somewhere, in a low-light lab, an etymologist X’s
another creature off the list of living species.
The word “extinction” is deafening;
the sound of gradual diminishment
goes completely unnoticed.
It happens that way.
In my field on summer nights,
fireflies flash attracting mates.
Bats swoop overhead in heat lightning
taking in their fill of mosquitos.
I can’t tell if there are fewer than last July.
Marcella Wolfe lives a split life between Washington, D.C. and Paw Paw,
West Virginia. Her poetry has been published in Hawai'i Pacific Review, Santa
Fe Literary Review, Tattoo Highway and other journals. She read on love at
the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon series on Valentine’s Day in
Washington.