BEETLE

It ran sideways out of the leaf-litter, black&gold, living a life in a garden I regard as my domain, shaped here, pruned there, but not controlled. This beetle, dwelling beyond words, has its own life there unheeding, older than the garden and the hedgerow on the hillside and the oak tree in the field that was here before the houses, each ripple and fold of earth keeping its own time that ancestors of this beetle knew; insects untold have bred here until now, this instant of time in which I watch it scuttle off into leaf mould I have laid upon the the soil, stored and sifted for a winter mulch, where it will find a home, this beetle, this gift, a gem whose black&gold I cannot contain in my mind; but out there in the vastness of time that is the garden it lives, always new however old.