I looked at space pictures the other day and saw a picture of a galaxy. I’ve seen similar pictures many times but yesterday I researched the praying mantis for my book and the two images came together.

 Part of the magic of writing is when two unalike ‘stuffs’ come together in a new way. This is part of the art in what sometimes seems (in dark moments) nothing more than a formula. But the same can be said for galaxies, right?

Kissing Mantis

The kissing mantis waits in spreading dark

To take my hand and provide wings of a dream

So I might never turn and see in her mark

My darkened shadow self’s fading gleam

And as I sweep the seas in a stellar monsoon

I spy a long–tressed lady in the starry brine

Smooth strokes of light shape a lonely moon

Who casts her child among the stars to pine

And the watery land below us torridly turns,

Waking and dreaming, caught in shadowed force

The veins of a turning galaxy that glisten

And the curved arms of the mantis keep the

course