Your thorax mimicking flattened green leaf,
your head an emerald camouflaged pod,
you sometimes stalk like a cat, bringing grief
to cricket and grasshopper, lurching nods
ripping your jaws into flesh. Compound eyes
which artists envy, altering color
through changing light, composing sly disguise
from milky opal with fake pupil for
sun, chocolate or licorice by night.
Rotating your skull, 300-degree
skill, you keep every far corner in sight.
(No wonder your name means prophet or seer.)
Yet I question if your males foretell fate,
becoming the main course after they mate.
Roger Armbrust
January 28, 2011
