The Way of the Witchetty Grub

The Way of the Witchetty-Grub

1. How it is in the end

We house hunt near the beach with the realtor

Sunday afternoon. It’s a laborious task

to choose a space to parallel your dimensions¾

a cocoon for maturation, a coffer for dressers and linen.

The realtor parades us through houses; few are tidy,

most are dated, while others are beaten, sapric

and declining in shame. The last house

to view reads like this: Lovely waterfront home

with an exceptional view down the canal. Huge fireplace,

upgraded kitchen in last several years, nice screened porch,

two car garage, estate sale. A wheel chair ramp at the entry;

I feel the slip begin in the foyer¾to the hum of the dead¾

a discernable flutter like the ghost moth.  Realtor mentions

the woman died as if it’s luck; but breath is held in here¾

our sanguine natures hold fast to familiar vibrations¾

she’s hovering like moth wing to the candlewick. I wander

rooms filled with her proofs: piano and glassware,

cabinets of motherless dolls, her fingerprints still on the kettle

and the oven mitt’s shaped to her hand¾these are her artifacts.

In the bathroom her hairbrush lays under a note taped to the mirror

Did you take your medicine?

Shadows hold still in their shape; wait to exhale requiems

to her crucifix on the wall. The fluttering follows, hovers near doilies

like snowflakes on shelves with ceramics and curios;

she murmurs it’s simple and quick, a diffusion of bone.

2. How it is in the beginning

The witchetty grub¾plump and wrinkly¾burrows underground

to the root of the Red River Gum digesting its sap, leaving

sawdust trails in her arboreal home. Her existence terminal,

she slips into her chrysalis¾this is her magic, her pantomime

of the living until later, her adapted inertia, a diffusion of bone,

emerges the ghost moth; wings beat Cartesian circles

over the desert wijuti bush in search of a mate.