A Fable

The Poet and the Praying Mantis

Once upon a time, an old poet called Pancho sat at his desk in a small hotel room in Havana, the sole window of which that looked out across a street and upon the sea. He was trying to think of something worthy of inscribing an ode to. Everywhere he cast his mind, to the half-empty bottle of bourbon on his desk or the spry, beautiful and careless young Cuban women who dashed and trilled together like magpies below his window to the political movements that called for peace and sensibility- everything seemed so trite and obvious and temporary. An ode is love that lasts as long as language and needs an object whose beauty is permanent and whose merit is above controversy. The poet deplored to his muse her infidelity, "Oh, send me something to love!"

Just then, a long-bodied bug hopped through the open window and on to the desk. The insect was gold, rather than green, and glowed with a soft light that made the objects on which her light shone suddenly beautiful whether a blank sheet of paper or an unfinished cigarette.

"My mother, Euterpe, to me has commanded
A flight through your window tonight
To answer your prayer, for, as you demanded
A love made from reflections of light,
My heart is immortal, o, write me a poem!
I care for the sick and the felon
My beauty's as fertile as the softest loam
And amusement grows sweet as a melon."

The poet, inspired by the beaming bug, picked up his pen and used it to flick the cricket back through the window. "What the hell rhymes with praying mantis?" he growled into the musky, swirling, tropical night.

Moral: Inspiration is the reflection of consent, beheld in a mirror.

ODE, n. An appreciation of any vessel strong enough to constrain a tortured metaphor, large enough to hold a poet's delusion, and conveniently named.
PRAYING MANTIS, n. One who worships herself in the morning, the grass in the afternoon and the sphinx in the evening. Semi-homophone of graying Francis.