Heuschrecke

It came the way a fright does, all at once. Nothing, and then there it stood, as though it had been expected. It came carrying the Seven Stelae and was promptly relieved of them.

An Adamic likeness, roseate flesh and hirsute vestment, ears outspread, a face half-remembered from bedtime: an improbable theophany, and a friendly one. Vitruvian measure, cruciform passion, the Tau pose of the unbegun; it stands as it arrived, arms flung wide and now emptied. Only the eyes stir, wandering in perpetual oscillation, like the last stars that will not leave the dawn.

The hay-leaper, the portent, the visitation; a pedant of sudden arrivals, and not yet done arriving. Every part of it still reaches outward, mid-leap and stuck there, and against all reason it is content, lighter for all it has lost, caught in the Glück of its becoming. Ever after, better out than in.

Ach, du liebe Heuschrecke!