Sir David Attenborough, I Think I Love You

by RITA ORRELL

After lying in the cool dark sand,    you rise, khaki pants soaking
wet,    to show me the belly of a horseshoe crab,

spied on mating slugs,    their bodies suspended by a strand of slime,
organs twisted in hermaphroditic ecstasy.

Because of you I pity    the sad, short life of the mayfly,    the unborn
victims of parasitic wasps,

admire the skill of beetles folding wings beneath elytra; the ants that
herd aphids, drink their sweet excretions.

I envy how when you snap your fingers broody cicadas try to make
love to you.