Kafkas Bee Stings

To go out on a limb
I dare test the weight
when I say, I understand Kafka this way;
It is not crazy to say there are Samsa's even today.

When I stand below 30 foot blades of grass,
called reeds,
when I brace the arch of my foot upon the burl
at the base of a redwood tree,
when I lean into the onshore wind, steady at 20 plus
while the ocean surges, spilling its seams

it does not unravel me

To know how small we may be
here and now, this and that
as is
can change
will
be-
come

When I see bricks and iron
trying to scrape the sky
I smile wide, and laugh
at our grand endeavors
so easily eroded
back into the dust of us
that never leaves
but collects and dulls,
and lingers in the light.

Now, to an insect, a mote may be a mountain,
and ant hill, the Andes;
one of those places we look up
and are showered in our deluge of naivete.
An innocence that washes away, sheds, refuses
its state, affixed with distorted perceptions
of name, place, size and domain, to roam and dwell.
While it is unnatural, deplorable to many,
to conceptualize that our taxonomy
doesn't belong with the birds.
None of us evolve as eminent as these.

That's what I believe Franz says
when he means, Gregor wakes from his dream,
hating honeyed honesty, preferring analogy
through entomology, so it would most simply seem
when explaining such reproductive things.




Image By Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), Metamorphosis XXIII, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.