Katydid

The katydid grips sunlight with its spiny feet,
presses its belly toward the air.

Of all the mundane, everyday cruelties
our ingenuity has made,
glass is perhaps the cruelest.

By centimeters, katydid creeps along
a perpetual periphery, at
the edge of the outside when
it should be plunging in,
swallowing and swallowed by
the breeze.
Each step brings the air no closer,
leaves shelter no farther behind.

If katydid is a philosopher,
it will be sucking on this predicament for a while.

But Schroedinger’s catbox wasn’t the feline’s idea,
and while katy did wander in to
the other side of this glass, looking,
katy doesn’t spend its life between walls,
behind panes.

A brighter green out of the light than in,
a katy in my hand
becomes a katy in a bush,
my small apology for the trick of windowpanes.

Katydid seems to shrug once,
then opens the Da Vinci architecture of its body
and folds itself into the sky.