God’s Grasshoppers

A poem

The short sunflower who volunteered to grow by my shed — Julie S. Paschold

God’s Grasshoppers

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nought,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
— Isaiah 40: 22–23

I
am a grasshopper.

I am a squishy soft hard-headed
one
of many.

I am a tiny creature in a swarm
eating the green of the earth.

I consume.

I realize this
sitting at my picnic table,
my body covered in tiny flakes
of my willow tree

shed when I cut a branch that fell
from the wind blowing in
the oncoming thunderstorm.

I can see the branch draped over
my wood pile, drying, dying,
with other branches I sawed
and severed to enable the garbage truck
to reach our bins of refuse.