I can still remember

when I was just a wee lad

and received my first 

Venus Fly Trap,

how I used to sit

and fantasize about

Giant Plants from Venus,

how they’d lie in wait for any astronaut 

to get careless,

to be snatched up

in one quick and lurid movement.

All but one – him they’d let escape 

to his home planet, unwittingly 

taking the seedling aliens

to sprout in the fertile Carolinas

to conquer us all.

But now, as I watch Bettie

- As I call her -

Waiting patiently on my windowsill

I start to wonder…

Perhaps there lies another reason

to the quirky nomenclature,

perhaps the discoverer (after the natives)

had first felt his heart fracture

before stumbling upon this

carnivorous animal-plant-creature,

and thought of Lady Venus

as he watched a beetle catch that sweet aroma.

Watched how the bug sought for it,

lured out from its mossy lair

to crawl for the pink coquettish lips.

Watched how the poor bug shook its antennae

and rattled its mouth-bits

in tiny clicking terror

as the barbed walls closed in around him

to shut out the world,

to sap his life-essence,

to leave behind only a chitinous husk.

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