Walking in the pines,
I find a message in a
beetle gallery
Etched on to a log,
in inscrutable scrimshaw.
There's a story there.
I can't translate these
Runes from a different language,
a filagree code.
These beetles and I,
we sit on separate branches
of the Tree of Life,
They chew on their branch,
I dangle my feet from mine.
Same idea, I guess.
Then, it dawns on me,
the message in the lacework:
"Don't call us boring."
Bark beetles don't fit
In seventeen syllables.
They need a whole book.