The scarab stares up at the sun,
despairing. The dry air electrifies.
This way or that crackles
at knife’s edge.
Sand swirls up
to the peddler’s
padded palm,
little
granular
ticks.
The beetle sings
her small sorrow,
aches chains. She is
a summered never scuttling
through paper dry groundcover:
her always.
Space splits open,
but she can only crawl.
She can only carry grains
of sand. His saddled hand
descends, scoops her
to eye-level. Her spindled limbs
snag his skin. The sky
is white as rage.

Hush he whispers, Take wind.