The Leafhopper by Robbi Nester

The Leafhopper

In my city neighborhood, most things are the color
of concrete, or the dull tar black of the street,
red brick rowhomes, strictly functional. No trees
grew on our block—too messy, my mother said,
too much trouble to maintain. But she allowed
my father, with his farmer’s hands, a tiny patch
of lawn where he could plant, and I could study
whatever lived there, cabbage whites or skippers,
ants and sowbugs, bees, nightcrawlers like thin
lengths of copper wire, and the occasional leafhopper,
a bit of the tropics, with its aqua and red body,
angular as a sail, yellow legs and belly, face like
an African mask. It perched on a rose leaf,
anomalous as a bird of paradise. Then I collected
him—I was sure it was a he, bright as a male bird—
dropped him with some leaves into an empty
Hellman’s jar with a punctured lid, and set off
to the library. I discovered that his colors were
a warning. He was a parasite sucking the sap
out of the garden’s plants, spreading disease.
He even did it to the trees on other blocks.
It was the first time, but not the last I learned
to question beauty, to ask why something so
distinctive took this form, and to distrust it,
so that, drawn by the rose, I may not grasp the thorn.

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Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at RobbiNester.net