The Locusts by Robbi Nester

The Locusts by Mary Boxley Bullington

The Locusts

Eating their way through
layers of brick, the locusts
emerge at last from
centuries of rest
into the early April light.
Last time they saw the sun,
the city was a field.
No pavement and no
house, nothing but
wind and waving grass. 
 
Speckled with scarlet
violet, and blue, as bright
as blooms  or bits of glass,
they clamber on their
jointed legs, all spikes
and ends, as if seeking
the book whose ancient
margins they once occupied,
the brush that laid these
pigments on the parchment page.
 
 
How like us they have
grown— their brows
arched in surmise over
eyes as human as my own.
Tiny fingers clenched,
their voices rise in shrill
surprise, inquiring
“Where? Where?”
as their antennae
taste the air.

Robbi Nester

Robbi Nester is the author of an ekphrastic chapbook titled Balance (White Violet, 2012) and other poetry collections. Her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Broadsided, Silver Birch Press, Poemeleon, and Inlandia.