Nature

Consider the fly with his wondrous
green and blue eye,
faceted like a gemstone of Heaven,
and the spider with her slender legs
akimbo to our glance, and ask,
is she walking like a clown on stilts
or is she a wiry ballerina
gliding across my kitchen floor,
to pirouette at the wall
and disappear forevermore?
And see the autumn leaves putting on
their spangled beauty to greet death,
unlike ourselves
with our pale mottled skin
and smell of medicine.