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.