When my daughters were seven and fourteen, I wanted them to grow up with the smell of green tomatoes, so I had a small garden in the backyard. There were edible-podded sugar snap peas, a chive plant, and …
Flowers
Marigold, cosmos,
dianthus buds in the breeze
play on the garden’s green sea –
tight mouths nursed by the sun.
Stems that make a ruffled fence
resist my scissors
but can’t keep in the fragrance.
Tiger-striped, a bee
buzzes in a poppy’s bowl
of orange light.
There were also insects—beetles. When I found them, I would go to the kitchen door and call out, “killer fingers.” The girls came out and watched me squash the beetles between my thumb and first finger.
Where I live in India, there are scorpions. During my beginning months of living in a newly-built house, I found them inside. The first time, a black one, three inches long, was behind the bathroom door. Seizing a pail, I put it upside down over the body, and alone and terrified, got my chef knife, lifted the pail, and cut off the part that emerged. And kept cutting.
One day, several young men were carrying stones for me from the undeveloped plot beside mine where they were natural covers for scorpions. Finding one, the man pointed to it but did nothing. I stepped over and killed it, aware he would have let if live.
Since then, I haven’t seen another scorpion, but what lingers is this question—if I do, will I put a glass jar over it and carry it out, or if outside, let it be? The answer may be yes.
My realization is, “Fear that causes us to react within the world of creatures can mature to a more thoughtful view of our humanity in relationship with them.”