Ephemeroptera (Poetry)

Near-dusk, and water smokes as mayflies rise
up and forward in their mating flight,
lifting, falling back as though dizzy,
with the day’s last light fractured in their wings —
a cloud of cellophane cut-outs
caught in an updraught,
their frailness blown at random,
drifting on the lake’s cool breath.

The air thick with thin bodies
and a cloying, sickly odour of decay —
their wafting pheromones
a less than subtle invite to the dance
in the sky’s soft-lit lilac ballroom
where they waltz to instinctive rhythms,
coupled now, in tandem,
and keeping perfect time.

There is no break — no interval
for refreshments — a frenzy grips them,
one single urge that unifies the swarm
and they perform in synchronized display
until the last beat falters
and the females float away,
disperse with bloated abdomens
to seek damp nurseries.

Mistaking road for river,
they divebomb tarmac glistening after rain,
this hard disillusion the one baffling factor
in such short, ecstatic lives —
dazzled by headlamps,
their brittle bodies bounced from bonnets,
deflected by windscreens,
they lose direction, die —

their mission ultimately thwarted, eggs
strewn across a hostile habitat.
At dawn, the crackling insect husks
heap by the kerb like ghosts,
restless and fretting as though
they know they failed to leave a legacy —
the gene pool lacks their contribution
and the chance is lost.