Catching fireflies

Catching fireflies. Amadeo, Cavite

Closeup of the firefly world-newsupdate.blogspot.com/2009/03/firefly...

Entomology team from UST Graduate School headed by the author.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Man is the insect buster; self proclaimed, strong and bold;
He conquers his greatest enemy, wasting no time.
He has read enough books, and turned away from the old.
He’s Pied Piper now in new adventure in his prime.

To the rescue, he rid the world of aliens and all their kin;
"I am Gulliver," he said to the imagined Lilliputians,
With gloves and boots, armed with tools of the modern kind,
He saw himself riding to the West against the Indians.

Make way for this nemesis, the bugs run for your lives;
They dropped dead, crushed, unbearable was the pain.
Their shelter stormed, their nests torn, so with their hives.
It’s reminiscent of Pompeii where the ruins reign.

The air is stilled, there’s no more music in the night;
The pond is clear, but where have the fishes gone?
Plants still bloom, but their flowers are no longer bright.
Where are the bees and butterflies that meet the sun?

Frogs no longer croak, silent are the fields and the trees;
Where’s the cicada shrilling with joy, the cricket at night?
The melodious songs and calls of birds that never cease.
The mayfly’s visit, or the moth’s over a candlelight?

Suddenly the world became still. Didn't Rachel Carson
Tell in Silent Spring the birds didn't arrive one spring?
Or in biblical times, didn't a cloud of death over a zone
Kill creatures one by one, the survivors migrating?

Where have all the sweetest sugar and flowing silk gone?
Their makers, the busy bee and the the naive worms?
They too, have been stilled forever by the same poison
That killed the evil ones and their ugly forms.

Didn't Alexander the Great die on the Euphrates
Of malaria? Or the Pharaoh Menes of bee venom?
Thousands died building the Panama Canal and Suez,
And more death blamed to insects still unknown.

Who would like the fly around? But without it the dead
Would litter the ground, more so without the Scarabid.
Who would eat remnants of an enemy, diseases they spread?
For certain man doesn't like to die first? God forbid.

His joy to conquer lies in his genes, even against his kind,
Much less the lowly crawlers, for revenge or just game;
Yes, man is insect buster, self righteous, self-proclaimed -
But would he dare to kill a firefly just the same? ~