Hellgrammite: a poem

I promise to make some actual blog posts this winter now that the semester is over and populate this section of my website, but for now here's a poem I wrote during my creative writing class this summer based on some of my experiences and reflections I had during my aquatic entomology course. Hope you enjoy it!

Hellgrammite

Oh, dobsonfly!
Corruption's caterpillar
A bastard's butterfly
Midnight
Resident of the upside down
With your papery wings
You birth on bridges of stone
Progeny dripping from the ceiling
Come spring, come spring

In rapid creek, a predator
Children crawling in the current
Cracking open the carapace of case-makers
A wolf would be ashamed
Next to teeth like yours

Riparian riffle
Dual hooks in hand
Megalopteran, no wonder
Go devil, they
Shout at you
Agent of hell

You glitter
Like obsidian
Aurelian
I would be a fool
Not to gold rush for you
A pretty penny
To an angler
Or trout

Beneath hiking shoes that
Disturb your home
You rest
Among boulders
As an unknowable terror
Lurking in hundreds
Just below the water's surface