It’s so dry I feel bad for the bugs.
I found a bean worm clinging to a lettuce leaf,
the bean leaves long since turned ghost white
like scraps of toilet paper lost from their chore.
Loving lettuce the most unfair though it is to favor
one thing over another the way a mother for reasons
she’s ashamed to admit loves one child more,
my beloved lettuce receives a few drops of artificial rain.
WATER proclaim the bold faced white letters
decorating the plastic bottle I just sipped from,
a refilled bottle left behind by an environmentally
unconscious friend who buys water and wastes plastic,
each to our own waste, guiltless or no, I deliver
drizzled water to my grateful lettuce grateful it accepts
my gift of fake rain and drinks.
The desperate bean worm
isn’t desperate enough yet to eat lettuce,
poor dehydrated looking blob of yellowness like a tired balloon
wishing the children’s birthday party was over,
the worm hasn’t chewed a single hole in the lettuce leaf
I lift drippy with water from the sink
imagining the worm grateful for the bath saying,
“thank you.” I feed the worm to the compost pail,
struggling against hoping it survives to spin
a cocoon and bloom a bean beetle to eat my beans
next summer. Summer? Summer is supposed to be
hot, but it’s October and I’m wearing shorts,
headed for the porch to sit in my chair and gawk
at the almost full moon because full moons are magic,
make wishes come true if you believe in wishing
—a syllogism based on a false premise I made up
to make the bean worm and me feel better.
For lack of other alternatives
the bean worm and I, both, are trying hard
to believe in wishing.