Bug Hunting

Grandma took the boys bug hunting,
turned over leaves, stems, twigs,
watched bugs scurry from their places,
searched for little bug houses in the grass,
created imaginary bug families,
wistful worlds of spiders, beetles, worms.

Smiling, bowed on hands and knees,
before wide-eyed, brown-skinned boys,
Grandma wove fabulous chronicles
of the lives and times of tiny arthropods,
little creatures most of us have never noticed,
unless we’re small enough to bend our knees.

Eventually the boys learned of the dispute
between myth and fact, story and data,
but it was a dark, dreadful day,
a clouded, foul, wretched day,
when the bugs’ world disappeared,
like a monsoon rain down an empty ditch.

Scientific skepticism soon replaced
awe and wonder in their eyes
as they’d recount their Grandma’s lovely lies.
Frowning brows and confused concern
finally took the place of giggled stories
about the secret, scary lives of bugs.

They speak of bug hunting now
as something that they used to do,
a silly little childish game
that wiled away the hours of the day,
but I still remember the pure enchantment,
the guileless gawking reverie of little boys.

Today I bend on aging knees,
to contemplate creepy crawlers
scuttling their way across the earth.
I imagined them heading home to families,
after a hard day grinding leaves
and disappear into the mystery.