71and76

Deep in the canyon, thread-bare snow above.
The rackets of leaping streams below.
Clustered on black weed.
Like beads by the handful of flat wet leaves.
Shining dully, like dusty berries.
Like grains of rice ready to be knocked from their stems.
The ladybugs in the thousands cling
To some poor shivering form of winter life.
The snow melts, the mountain tops grow bald.
The stream, saving nothing, runs out before April —
But all that is yet to come.
Now the little beetles huddle motionless.
They glisten with the wet.
Numb in their short black legs.
Exposed to any hungry jaw or beak
That crops its way along this morning run.
They frighten me, so vulnerable they are —
Touch a branch and rain down orange drops
That click on stones
And lie there upside-down, their legs barely waving.
They remind me of my childhood.
I cannot step without crushing them —
They are so many and to no purpose:
My life, their death, it seems.
— Robert Burke '76