Tiny Eschers After Rain

If one of these unrolled pillbugs looked up,
glassy, beaded dew would refract the light
from the sky and bend their world of vertical green lines
into spheres of shining blue.

Even if the pillbugs were too nearsighted
to see the geese above them
arrowheading their way north,
the potato bugs could hear them.

Honking-honked birds with their straight necks
crissing one season, crossing the next:
for centuries they’ve been stitching the north and south together
so that pillbugs can have a whole world
beyond their tiny patch.

BIO proving I am not an AI or bot:

Pushcart Prize nominee, researcher & farmer Terry Trowbridge’s poems are in Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Masticadores USA, Poetry Pacific, Carousel, Lascaux Review, Carmina, untethered, Progenitor, Miracle Monocle, Orbis, Pinhole, Big Windows, Muleskinner, Brittle Star, Mathematical Intelligencer, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, New Note, Hearth and Coffin, Synchronized Chaos, Delta Poetry Review, Stick Figure, miniMAG, and 100+ more. His lit crit is in BeZine, Erato, Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, Seeds, and The/t3mz/Review.  His Erdös number is 5. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant.