Ladybug Season!

Thanks to Bearings Online for publishing this poem.  

March of the Ladybugs

One at a time, they’re good luck charms,

quaint as a cartoon greeting-card                   

neat dome like a candy button. 

At daybreak one circumnavigates

the waterglass, His glossy shell

cracks to sprout waxpaper wings.

As the window brightens, more collect

in its skim of condensation.

They cluster on the ceiling,

red and random as measles.

Every so often one is moved

to buzz in sudden spirals,

and land with a clatter on a lampshade.

or bungle into my hair.  Their ranks swell,

an army of redcoats. Once doctors

mashed them to cure toothaches;

farmers entreated Our Lady

to send in scarlet swarms--

rosary beads spilling from the sky. 

Harvest in, they’d clear the fields

and burn the vines. By afternoon

The multitude has flown.

One straggler still scouts for water,

wandering the wasteland of my desk.