She bows her triangular head
and closes her huge eyes.
She folds her forelegs,
spiked and raptorial,
as she prays:
I thank you for blessing me
to bring blessings to others.
I thank you for making me
a snake, a hare, a vulture,
and now this green mantis.
They follow me
to their long-lost homes.
They follow me
to their graves.
Some say I’m a soothsayer.
To others, I am a queenly bitch.
Some call me a necromancer.
But you know me
and always have.
You made me as I am
and as I am not.
So the mantis prayed
before her meal this day,
a helpless grasshopper,
still alive.
Prey held by
the same bent hands
from which her prayer
had been offered.
The mantis ate,
beginning with an eye,
munching more slowly
than a beast with his cud.
Hours later there was nothing
left but the glow of dusk,
halo of hunt and thanksgiving.
the prayer of the mantis
Jacob Friesenhahn teaches Religious Studies and Philosophy at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. His poems have appeared in BOMBFIRE, Burrow, Calla Press, Canary, The Lake Front, Litbreak Magazine, and Nostalgia Press.
