Nature's Place

While checking out an area of the garden for forms of life I reached down to pull a dried blade of grass aside to see past it better. Then I noticed it was attached to a thicker something which, when I looked closer, turned out to be attached to a long slender body.

Oops! It was a stick insect and it nearly lost two of its front legs. I nearly pulled them off. They are held together straight out in front of it looking like an extension of its body.

This fellow’s been through the wars. He’s got half of the left antennae missing along with the left back leg. God knows how it happened. It could have been a battle of mythical proportions where he had these body parts ripped off in a struggle for his very little life.

Or it could be he caught himself on some structure in the wind and was damaged in the violent collision, he can fly. His wings are folded along the length of his lower body, from behind the vestigial wing casings.

It could be a natural consequence of old age among stick insects, who knows.

But you have to respect any creature that can carry on so handicapped in a very hostile world. That’s what I call courage, the absence of any self consideration.

No ‘god, what am I going to do now?’, or ‘look at me, I am no longer whole, I might as well die!’ None of that. This fellow registered my presence and acted accordingly, he tried to get away.

Survival, that’s what the natural creatures know. If I’m hungry I eat, whatever I can. If I’m thirsty I drink, whatever will do. If I need shelter I find it, and deal with what I find there when I get to it.

If I need to fight for my life or any other thing I need I will fight to the death, if need be.

If I need a mate I’ll call out, somehow, and I will find one or die looking. If I am a stick insect I don’t need much more than that, unless I do.

Though I might fly for the sheer pleasure of it, who knows I wouldn’t? I might just love to fly, why else have wings? Maybe I need to love to fly. Who knows? Not you.

See my magnificent body being, I earned the right to live, until I die.

Look at this beauty. Dancing flame flower I call it. I haven’t seen anything like it before, though I have seen some magnificent flowers. And I don’t know its name.

The red and yellow and green. Look at the structure of it, the way the curled petals have unfolded to reveal and crown the reproductive parts. Come to me! She says.

Reproduction, the whole point of existence, everything reproduces. Until I no longer need to need. And I am. Complete.

Completion, isn’t that what everything lives for. The sense of it. And when I am complete do I need to live as I have known? Who knows what then? Who needs to know!

See that magnificent stigma, three pronged. Reaching out beyond the wheel into the unknown. For the kiss of life borne on the wings of some strange and wonderful creature. To live and live again.

Reaching down into the womb of life itself. From whence I come. You too. Just a simple flower.

And those anther’s on their stamen, cart wheeling around the base to provide all the chance of the stranger carrying off the seed of a new me.

So that one day I may know life itself, life without form. At the end of the longest journey.

What magnificence Thou be.

A bee. A solitary bee? Wonderful soldier in the workings of all things that be.

I love Thee.

All copyright reserved / Mark Berkery