Insect Poem

I swat at my forehead, I scratch at my ankles
Mole and wart, and a rash that rankles

Everything flying, and scraping, and biting,
And wens and ringworm, canker and blighting.

It's become the season of webs and itch,
Mites in the treacle, worms in the ditch.

It's become the season of mold and flies,
and of small spiders with bulging eyes.

With buzz and hum, and with a chuckle and whine,
The flappers and creepers crawl in to dine.

On scrapes of our butter, on cheekbone and crumb,
They batten and guzzle, then bite my thumb.

I hear them sizzle on leg or wing
Then flutter or hiss to the cornice and sing.

The drawing room walls are alive with sound
Like the dying elms out there on the mound.

With the twitter of Martins, and caw of rooks,
But here I have hornets, with stings like hooks.

And drunken wasps, and belligerent bees,
Drone on carpets that jump with fleas.

Enough of September. Let weather chill
And a drizzle of bright hail spatter each sill.

Let sleet and fogginess bother their hives
And their haunts in trees. Let them hide for their lives.

No more mosquitoes, no daddy-long-legs,
And no more moths with their eating eggs.

Nothing that whistles, and nothing that chews,
And nothing that scuttles, or weaves in my shoes.

I'm sick of the lot of them, squirmy or stealing
Over the window and up to the ceiling,
They give me a horrible dirty feeling.

So spray the powder and pull the chain,
Let cold October drown them in rain

And then November, with ice and mist,
Throttle the rest in a choking fist.

It serves them right if, by late December,
Insect is a word I don't remember.

-George Macbeth


Today, Ken found a spider in my hair.