Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches

The females hang out and the males fight to make the scene –
same ol’ same ol’ but with a new research twist

suggesting a medium-sized guy is most ferocious

(ramming heads, flipping the adversary, whacking, and so on)
because he benefits most from aggressive behavior. But

did the girls really just hang around for some action?
I hate that.

*

Playing with Clampitt’s Word, Uninsistingly

Certainly the tide or the dog striding along the sluff of seaweed,
this afternoon – brown, light green, black green, white and red.

And when she trots ahead, a slippery treasure in needle-y teeth.
I am happy. How happy?

Not steamy – or even blissful. But certainly warmed
by the gray mottled shore under gray clouds

with my grizzled creature who, when I call, Come Trudy!
always listens and sometimes obeys. Never

uninsistingly as is terrier nature. My nature?
being attached to the future that we both know as snack –

and, even if a peapod,
knowing that Trudy’ll tear it apart as if a rat.

Photograph by Ed Dunens