The Crawfish
the little crawfish that nipped my finger has the coolest job on earth rolling clods of wet humus into moist balls to build a chimney & bring rich dark earth to the surface its chimney had closed somehow, so I turned the tower over with my foot thinking I did him a favor opening an air duct a cardinal mistake— this tiny crawfish emerged from the thick gray mud claws raised toward me flexing & threatening so I slipped a finger beneath it to lift it back into its hole the mudbug pinched me hard a little fold of skin bunched up between the pincers, the mudbug not half my thumb’s length squeezed it tight today that hole was plugged again from the inside when the weather’s warm & dry the crawfish rolls another ball capstone to close the chimney and hold moisture in until late winter rain or a much too early spring
Haiku 2020
“may we all have better vision in 2020”
picked off my hand
the ant that just bit me
—I might have killed it—
3-8-2020
two bumblebees buzzing
belly to buttonhole
zizz over my head
3-22-2020
turning over
the garden shovel and--
out drops half a worm
3-23-2020
second night of quarantine
—the smell
of someone else’s barbecue
3-24-2020
carpenter bees on
corner of the garage next door
eating the building
3-25-2020
The clouds are about
to drop from the sky
Aw! They crushed the moon!
3-29-2020
a curtain over
the window keeps lightning
from coming in
4-19-2020
epigram
“it's either in this world
or never”
waiting for the wind
to raise a ruckus
tornado warnings again
4-19-2020
it was just a handful of rain
flung out of a cloud onto
the sidewalk
5-16-2020
©2021 Dennis Formento
All rights reserved
Dennis Formento promises never to write a bio longer than the average poem. He lives in Slidell, Louisiana, Mississippi Bioregion, USA. St. Tammany Parish co-ordinator of 100,000 Poets for Change. Author of Spirit Vessels, Cineplex, Looking for An Out Place. Poem “Amarcord,” appeared in English and Italian, in Americans and Others: International Poetry Anthology, Camion Press, 2nd ed., 2020. Poem, “the floe of ice,” performed with Simone Bottasso on organetto, is on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlXNe9lKkxg
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