Safe in our Sierra Nevada
cool mountain breeze, listening to the
hot tub bubbling around us, we lie back
pink in the last of the daylight,
watch a pale green praying mantis
strike a tai-chi pose, become a twig
an uninvolved stick,
a part of a leaf on the deck,
             and then as I’m about to speak
it happens:
the mantis, nature’s ninja,
blurs like a film in fast forward,
snags a black bumblebee from flight,
drags it to a sudden stop.
             But then the counter movement of life
swirls before the death bite,
and I watch the diaphanous wings
pull free.
                And as the black bee takes the air,
something inside me sees
a second chance,
the life I have not yet lived.