Good Friday in Savannah

Some folks call them palmetto bugs
since they occupy the palms
wedged decoratively between the live oaks.
The size of first grade fists,
they lurk under leaves
until once a week,
they are evicted briefly by the street sweepers,
only to scurry back to the darkness.
At times, though, they stray
into the light.

And if you stray east,
past Broad,
past Savannah Marble and Granite
(celebrating 100 years),
with its sample tombstones out front,
where the sunburned houses
keep a sleepy watch over scattered Kroger carts,
and the sidewalks are as dependable
as disciples,
to the east,
they’re just called roaches.

It’s the same thing,
almost.

My roommate and I discovered one
on the entryway stair,
upturned and waving feebly.
She took the roach phone book
and did the deed,
as I stood in the kitchen plugging my ears
and squeezing my eyes shut.
I wasn’t against the killing so much,
just the crunching.

This is sort of a routine,
she’ll crunch, and I’ll clean up;
equally complicit, a partnership.

Today was different, though.
I’d never seen such violence.
Outside so ordinary,
inside, a kaleidoscope of color;
a roach exterior
a palmetto interior,
dashed
smashed
splayed
laid
visible for anyone to see,
dead as a doornail on the threshold
of in and out.

We try to keep our surfaces clean,
so I grimly did my deed,
and tidied the remains away
in the garbage,
no room for resurrection.

In the second before it died,
did it think of another world,
of better times, of palm fronds?
It probably had no time to decide:
roach or palmetto.
The label was up to us.

INRI
Word made flesh
and blood
and color

It’s the same thing,
almost.