Patricia Phillips-Batoma

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Late Summer Praying Mantis

After Shuntaro Tanikawa

Having left behind the soft greens
of sunlit shrubs, moisture of soil
beneath grass, you cling paper brown
to the kitchen's metal screen.

Is there really prayer
inside these folded forearms?
Or perhaps each year when we meet here
summer is simply gathering in on itself.

Soon you'll effortlessly surrender all
to a mass of eggs,
and as days wither,
you will settle into the dwindle.

From inside the house I watch you
loosen yourself to the distant movement,
something like the imperceptible fall
of rose petals to earth.

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry, Writing in a Woman's Voice and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.