—Chelifer cancroides

No more than twelve-point typeface,

a body the size of a W, or less,

there is still a fierceness

among these words. Aristotle

pulled back his hand

when he found these bugs

among scrolls, parchment

unfurled to skitters and pincers.

It could be letters rearranging,

sounds and syllables. It could be

a threat of war, fathers weeping

over the bodies of children,

mothers searching the burning

frames of their homes. Hidden

somewhere on a dark shelf

is a book holding paragraph

after paragraph of history.

It has that musty smell of age

like the volumes of encyclopedias

tucked into a corner

in my grandparents’ basement.

One tome had pictures of people

in a battle-scarred land, the edges

of pages yellowed and raggedy,

chewed upon by an unseen pest.

Maybe a pseudoscorpion

raised its claw the size of a comma

to defeat these mites that came

to destroy the past. Yesterday,

I read that there are 1.4 billion

bugs to every single person,

some so small they might as well be

dust illuminated during an autumn

afternoon by rays of sunlight slanting

through a window. Someone, I hope,

is there with a book opened

to ancient philosophy, sigma

crawling across the page,

a predator in the language.