Those waves given to break upon the sea
have their own bee-insane recovery from freezers,
their own moondogs crossing
paths smeared by human fingers,
their own lenseless telescopes,
their own lung-mutant quivering tines
to test a melody of life on the planet Air.

Even so, air itself placed a grasshopper
among us as we milled the Boardwalk.
Who knows but this tiny suicidal missionary
may have been a changed code,
a living shard of that fission
by which we triumphed over less witty bipeds,
over ourselves when time was.
The ravaged pugnacious African we crushed
rears his bones to warn us,
and this dun-colored insect
with a measured purpose
like the Los Angeles mudslide full of corpses
may be an explorer more
shrewd than we guess.