Terminator

Martin Zarrop

Midge, bored with moons
but not with live star gazers,
feasts on naked flesh, seeks
residues of human chemistry.

It loves the warm and wet
while other species perish
through extreme events that 
keep on coming:

drought and heatwave, 
pesticides, pollution,
loss of grasslands, peat bog;
plant pollinators falter,

sicken, die ― less food for
fauna further up the chain,
less splat on windscreens
clear of bugs again. 

Moon past her prime
we trace through glass 
the edges of this other
changing world

and gape in wonder as
each crater fades to black
while midges feed
and whisper:

I’ll be back

The Science

Insect biomass globally has decreased by around 11% each decade since the 1980s There is some argument over possible explanations. Researchers have found that models that take weather into account, rather than just habitat changes, have more predictive success. It is too early to gauge the effect of human-caused climate change, although warmer, wetter springs have a positive influence on biomass.

The Poet

Martin Zarrop is a retired applied mathematician. He has published three pamphlets: No Theory of Everything (Cinnamon 2015), Making Waves (V.Press 2019) and To Boldly Go (V.Press 2020) and three full collections: Moving Pictures (Cinnamon 2016), Is Anyone There? (High Window Press 2020) and Turn Around When Possible (V.Press 2023).

Next poem: winter by Kaitlin Stack Whitney