Are we not
 Like the rain beetles
 Males flying about urgently
 After rain first soaks
 The forest floor in fall
 For a few hours
 Then no more
 Each searching
 For that one
 Female
 Soaked in pheromones
 Waiting
 At the entrance
 Of her egg burrow
 There to mate
 And both
 Soon to die?
 
 Are we not?
 
 And why then
 Do we judge our path
 Through this universe
 More noble and right
 More fitted with the purposes
 Of heaven?
 
 When these ancient ones
 Still sell their
 Hairy-legged, hard-bodied
 Aerial dances
 As if there were no other way
 To be with God.
 

 23 November 2018
 Cedar Ridge, Sierra Foothills
 

* Pleocoma, from the Greek, ‘abundantly hairy,’ the genus name for the 25 or so species of  rain beetle found from California to Washington that wait sometimes for years for a first heavy rain of fall before emerging to complete their life cycle.