Harboring: from the Lowlives Series
by Joanna Grant
Was it a ladybug, this little insect
I found somehow still clinging on
to the inside of my front window screen
when I finally returned to my lake house
I only see a few weeks out of each year,
and this a freezing January, and I long gone
since the August before? Was it a ladybug
I cupped in my hands and carried down
five flights, or was it that invasive species
I harbored, that lookalike beetle that supposedly
does us all harm in its red and black disguise?
Never mind. Whatever it was, I settled it
on a twig in the little front garden the groundskeeper
Helmer prepares each year for the long overwinter.
In fact, I think I want to remember it as beetle,
as unloved, unwelcome. To imagine it a nine days’
wonder, returning home to its own after having been
given up on for so long, so long away, with a strange
tale of giant, merciful hands, of its very own miracle,
its wild adventure in strange lands, its escape.
Joanna Grant is a Georgia native who has spent much of her life overseas, where she has studied or worked in England, Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, South Korea, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. Being a professional expatriate has complicated her sense of home, just as it has for the American soldiers in her classes in deployed locations. Her work has appeared widely. Her most recent poetry collection is Adrift from Alien Buddha Press.
