Locust are subject to plagues of their own.
Hordes of them lie dead in the street, or dying.
Instead of the sky, they've pressed their buzzing wings to the road,
Upside down, on their backs.

Maybe an invisible angel of death
Came and leafed through them.
Maybe it just picked out the first hatched.
Maybe it carefully took one of every ten,
Carefully moving the decimal point over each time
On the way to the tally of decimation.

It makes me wonder what unique trait
The firstborn have to make them
Such easy prey for premature pickins.
Is it that they are more pressured to be perfect,
Or that they see a world of adults
Before other children are born,
And the confusion of what to be--
Grown or childlike, makes them resort
To extreme measures, while earthly pressures
Make them quite willing to take the bait?
Or maybe it's something we just can't see,
Something pure and innocent and weak
Lying around in their junk DNA?

-jenn