Digging distractedly for my keys
I almost stumble into the mandibles
of a stag beetle
right on my stoop brought here by
god knows, maybe the porchlight,
out of whatever loam
sheds neatly from his glossy vest.
 
This is an insect with zest, with heft
enough to take down others
of his kind, a certain weight
I take between thumb and forefinger
without any fear of crushing,
for a closer look at this alien
kin, mascara thick on his antennae,
true mouthparts tucked discretely
beneath the massive grapplers—I, too, hide
my real mouth behind something bigger.
 
I'm compelled to set him down
somewhere homey in this city
under a hedge. Small giant friend of
my four-chambered heart,
that we should meet
and that neither of us twitch
in fear during the procedure
only recognition, skin to skeleton,
sets the tape in reverse—
 
a man walks backward off his steps
returning keys to his pocket,
somewhere a wood duckling re-enters its egg,
a swallowtail crumples its wings
back into its chrysalis,
a fern furls to a fiddlehead,
a blur—winters, summers,
a beetle relinquishes its massive grip on a twig
a boy returns to the ground,
 
and faster:
islands duck below sea level,
the ice flashes like a strobe, all beings shiver
their retreat over land bridges and
mountain ridges, unhumaning, unbeetling
our way back to the womb.

—Eben E. B. Bein

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