What shall I love if not the enigma – Giorgio de Chirico

Then afternoon again.
Jagged shadows in fall garden.
Praying mantis, supernatural insect
that Middle Kingdom Egyptians believed
escorted dead souls to the underworld,
that ancient Greeks trusted
would lead lost travelers home,
stalks the tangled bed of spent flowers,
steals across a lone sedum,

begins its climb up a trimmed boxwood
bordering the half-railing
to lay her eggs and die.
Triangular head attached
to flexible neck swivels
180 degrees, five bulging, staring eyes.

I pictured Escher’s haunting Dream,
woodcut print of a mantis
half the size of a man, straddling
a lifeless bishop reposed on a catafalque
above a casket, strikingly similar,
but for the mantis,
to the recumbent effigy above
the tomb of Bishop Potter
in the Chapel of the Tongues
in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

I brought my young daughter to the Cathedral on All Hallows’ Eve
for its annual crypt-crawl: ghouls, demons, witches, parading
through the spacious nave, giant spiders ballooning
up the columns as Nosferatu, original Dracula,
towered on a giant screen behind the altar
while an organist played silent movie music
and peacocks spread their plumage in the outside garden.

The Wasp Woman, The Black Scorpion, The Fly, Them, The Deadly Mantis.
I’d save my allowance and race to the latest insect horror movie.
I believed then in monsters.

Devil’s Horse, God Worshipper, Nun, Prophet, King Solomon’s Camel.

Did Escher wake in a nightmare
sweat before creating Dream or did it comfort
him imagining this carnivorous ambush
predator, its spiky, raptorial legs cut
from side-grained wood dominating
the mitered spiritual leader?
Pure preternatural fantasy.
Endlessly diminishing.
Evening darkness meeting ground at a black edge.

Is mantis praying with bishop,
is it solely the bishop’s dream,
or is the mantis, known for sexual
cannibalism, preparing to eat the bishop,
first to copulate, then devour him?

What I witnessed was real,
that visitation in the front yard,
now I’ll wait till spring,
and if I’m blessed,
for nymphs’ emergence
after their incomplete metamorphosis.