The puffy clouds were flying overhead
And landscape was just like Atlantis.
I watched as had descended on my hand
A praying mantis.

With forearms tucked below its android head
It lands, then jumps, then softly walks, then startles.
I do not know how I can understand
This praying mantis.

How can it live, and walk, and even still defend
From all that bites, that struggles and that blunders?
How can exist and live upon the land
The praying mantis?

With head in clouds and with limbs that bend -
To live in timespace or in soul, it wonders.
And if on self or vision to depend,
Thinks praying mantis.

What is the multiple, it asks the dead,
Between the inspiration and the practice?
And then it lifts to sky its dirt-stained head,
This praying mantis.

Whereto to fly, and whereupon to tread?
And how to catch a machaon as it flutters?
And how with life's web to interdepend?
Thinks praying mantis.

What chains to break, what causal links to mend?
And is it codependence when it's shutters -
When in my sexual act I lose my head?
Asks praying mantis.

It seemed so small, why did it feel so grand?
And why was it not rhinos, bears or monkeys?
Ah, 'twas my luck to have upon my hand
One praying mantis.

Ilya Shambat
https://sites.google.com/view/ilyashambatpoetry