Insects of River House

Dear George,

Growing up in the country, we were much closer to nature than I’ve been in my adult life.  My mother taught us the names of all the birds, and my father got us observe the many animals on our property.  But, most of all, I’d say, our world was populated with a remarkable variety of insects.  They were so ever-present that, in some ways, they were our companions and playmates in our daily lives.  For some time I’ve been writing short poems about the insects at our house on the Menominee River.  Recently, with even more leisure time because of coronavirus “stay at home” orders, I’ve taken to illustrating them with felt pen drawings.  Bugs, I’ve decided, are a perfect topic.  Here is my project so far.

Love,

Dave   

Our lawn held ten thousand mosquitoes

They arrived on the twelfth day of June

They weren’t so busy at noontime

But they thrived by the light of the moon

We’d search for the beetles in the forest

Turn over a log and they’re there

They liked to eat leaves and fungi

But earthworms, their number one fare 

The grasshoppers lived in the birch grove 

Strong legs, they could jump up so high

Grasshoppers weren’t even that hard to catch

I suspect they forgot how to fly

Dragonflies wore their coats of bright colors

They’d visit us out in our boat

Quite content to be with the humans

Since they tickled our ears and our throat

The ticks found our dogs in the forest 

They’d burrow right under their skin

As soon as a tick was ballooning with blood

We’d pop him, much to his chagrin

Cicadas are most mysterious bugs

The nymphs grow up deep in the earth

They tunnel to the surface and shed their skins

Their skeletons gave us kids mirth

The ants built huge colonies in the earth

Then we’d poke a tree branch in their hill

This drove the fierce ants to a frenzy

They rushed to find bad kids to kill

Millions of fireflies came with the sunset

We’d catch them in a big Mason jar

They never stopped switching their lights on and off

Each buglet, a glorious star

Thousands of wasps had their home in our field

This we remembered when we stepped on their nest

So angry, they attacked like a Prussian army

The sharpest of stings from this barbarous pest

The Junebugs came out at twilight

Their prime time, of course, was mid-June

They made a huge racket on the window screens

Busy mating by the light of the moon

Crickets remind me of grasshoppers

Except they can sing like a lark

It turns out that only the males chirp

Each one hits his high notes come dark 

Big horseflies harassed us young swimmers

These monsters had the nastiest bite

We thought them the ugliest bugs of all 

And screamed when we saw them in flight

The spiders spun webs on our eaves

To capture mosquitoes and flies  

I watched these artists as they built their traps  

Hard workers, so patient, so wise