We used to order feed in bulk.
Every month I greeted delivery man
Dan, cheerful and kind.
Once, when we were moving a ton
Of fifty pound sacks,
A cockroach skittered across our pallet.
I didn’t grow up with cockroaches.
I think I was in my thirties before I saw my first one …
In a bug museum.
Looking back, I see that bugs belong outside,
And there was nothing inherently nasty
About me that a bug lived on my farm.
Yet in that moment I felt shamed by my living situation,
By my inability to control
Anything,
By the squalid aspects of country life.
So I apologized for this nasty bug.
And Dan looked at me, and smiled, and said,
“I’ve always said that a cockroach is just another beetle.”
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