Invasive Species
The lanternflies
Are here again.
Scraps of bright silk,
Quick and sleek as fighting kites.
I am told that they are foreign
And do not belong.
The cat disdains her sunny spaces,
Her place in the pillows,
And slinks, like a jungle thing,
To indulge
Her hidden cruelty.
Children with gleeful faces
Pounce and stomp
On their way home from school,
Their summer games forgotten.
Adults, their lips mangled
With revulsion, smash them,
With papers and parcels
Or heavy soles
Driven by a hard steel toe.
And yet, they are beautiful,
These foreign invaders.
Strange, how they prompted
This orgy of hate.