Insects despise you in a peculiar way.
It is not that you are titanic and can smite.
Or even that you have sent so many to meet their maker
throughout your careless, barbaric life.
Nor is it jealousy of the power to live far too long.
No, it is because a man can live how he decides.
There was a man cursed by the Wicked Witch of Warsaw
To witness only one hundred more times the sunrise.
He did not chance merely sleeping in until midday,
And hide in the dark to see how he’d fare.
With his genius he devised a far surer solution.
He journeyed to the arctic circle, and there,
Basking in the sunrise only twice a year,
Lived far longer than most men do.
No, an insect could not imagine
Tempering a curse into a boon.
A human can surprise you.
An insect, though necessary and incredibly skilled,
Is merely a bundle of complex compulsions.
But a man is the product of free will.