it may have been
the smallest flying creature
I ever saw; without modernity’s grand prisms
I would have only felt it, a tingle on my ankle, then the itch
I could have crushed it, leaving a minuscule red slash on my skin,
the bloodsucker’s only loathed legacy, but how could I,
a giant glob of cells, master of motion, a driver of cars
one who swipes plastic cards to buy dead, roasted flesh of beings
a billion times the size of my ankle’s tiny guest
how could I be such a monster and blot out its light
with the slap of my paw, especially knowing,
in my wide world, a soft rain was falling?