Abecedarian for the Dangerous Animals

--Catherine Pierce

      

All frantic and drunk with new warmth, the bees

buzz and blur the holly bush.

Come see.

Don't be afraid. Or do, but

everything worth admiring can sting or sober.

Fix your gaze upward and

give bats their due,

holy with quickness and echolocation:

in summer's bleakest hum, the air

judders and mosquitoes blink out,

knifed into small, quick mouths. Yes,

lurking in some unlucky bloodstreams

might be rabies or histoplasmosis, but almost

no one dies and you

owe the bats for your backyard serenity.

Praise the cassowary, its ultraviolet head, its

quills and purposeful claws. Only one

recorded human death, and if a boy

swung at you, wouldn't you rage back? Or P.

terribilis, golden dart frog maligned by Latin,

underlauded and unsung, enough poison to

vex two elephants into death but ardent

with eggs and froglets, their bright protection

xiphoid. And of course,

yes, humans. Remarkable how our

zeal for safety manifests: poison, rifle, vanishment.