2A cockroach
Sits at the bottom of the Ladder,
Looking up.
Such a climb for stubby legs.
Where to begin?
There among the dust and trash,
La cucaracha makes no sound
Where journeys lead and spirits crash,
Where lofty goals meet filthy ground.
He was an albatross, once.
He was a winged spectacle,
Soaring, ever flapping,
Beating furiously to stay afloat in the sky
Until
He was so much dead weight,
A burden and an omen—
This is the system.
There with all the wind and waves,
He'd plunged and swooped from sea to strait
With all the ships and sailors brave,
'Til one man speared him—oh, his fate!
Before he had wings,
He had horns
And such a nasty temperament.
To be sure, he paid dearly for that
Bit of imprudence.
Raging through the Spanish street,
He hunted herds of human prey
—Flaring nostrils, clopping feet—
He gored three men who ran away.
Before that, he was something else,
A dog, a lamb, a sacred cow,
And each new body brought fresh hells,
New ways to sit and wonder how
Soul met body—
Death caught life
(This captor flesh,
This rotting wife).
The cockroach scuttles, frantic, lost,
With wings that will not give him lift,
A Spanish background he can't speak,
And dreams his mental pan can't sift.
He was a human, too, once,
And he laughed and leaped and cried,
Thought that he had found some peace,
But although he had tried,
The bad outweighed the good,
It seemed, a slightly tilting scale.
Close, but no cigar, they'd say,
And then: a trunk, a tail,
A feathered back,
A whiskered snout,
A pair of thumbs,
A fin, a doubt,
A neck so long,
A life so brief,
A love once lost,
A muted grief.