THE BEETLES by Dan Albergotti

by Dan Albergotti / Wednesday, 14 April 2021 / Published in Issue 20

There are an estimated 560 million beetles for every human on Earth

All you need is love, little guy, shiny
beetle, tiny god nestled in your green
carapace. You mirror back my love, you
don’t let me down as you crawl all over
every little thing on this planet, all
four hundred thousand of your known species.
Good morning, good morning! Every dawn you’re
here, there, and everywhere. When I see you,
I feel fine knowing you’re oblivious,
just doing your beetle things. Even when
kicked around by human feet, you dears just
let it be, just carry on, go nowhere
man can reach. And would you believe that I
need you, bug, more than any human soul?
Oh! Darling, it’s true. So let me watch you
pace along this sidewalk. Here comes the sun
quietly rising. If in its shine or
rain, I’ll just kneel here transfixed. Because there’s
something in the way you move that makes the
two of us one world not found across the
universe, what Donne called an everywhere.
Voracious little thing, eat up my time.
What else do I need but you, you nearly
xenomorphic gem? Human life is so
yesterday. I believe in you. I’m your
zealot—your hysterical, screaming fan.

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About Dan Albergotti

Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA Editions, 2008), Millennial Teeth (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), and Of Air and Earth (Unicorn Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Five Points, The Southern Review, The Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize, as well as other journals and anthologies. He is a professor of English at Coastal Carolina University.