Mother Mosquito

  

We know her as a pest,

And most agree it's best

To mash her to a bloody pulp

Before she takes her final gulp.

And how we hate to hear

Her scolding in our ear;

But let us hear her out

As she has her say about

What we crudely call "the bite"

She takes of us at night.

She finds it unfeeling

To charge her with stealing.

I mean, we're her flowers

In the warm summer hours,

And what flower feels as we

Of its butterfly or bee?

And who's getting rich?

Look at the poor ugly witch

In the moon as she drones:

She's nothing but bones.

And if you care to inspect her

When she's full of your nectar,

One drop—not even that!—

One droplet and she's fat,

And that goes to the batch

Of eggs she'll lay to hatch

In standing swampy waters

Her wriggler sons and daughters.

She's not a bandito!

She's mother mosquito,

A hard-working mother—

While that deadbeat or other

She'd happened to marry

Is a dew-sipping fairy.

And she'd like to make it plain:

It pains her to cause pain,

And the itch we come to feel

Once we raise the welt or weal

Where she'd lit so light and small

And left no mark at all!

Though it's not her fate to mate us,

To rove and pollinate us,

I ask for her in rhyme

What constitutes her crime?

Why should we kill and curse

Our loyal blood-drive nurse,

Who is also the relation

Requesting our donation?

Can we ever, you and I,

See her eye to compound eye?

And find in her and not the dove

The closest Nature as comes to love?

Then drink a toast to what must be

Of rum and blood respectively?

She asks we mend our age-old rift

And deem at last her theft a gift.

 

O mother mosquito! Mother mosquito!

If only she knew what she was incognito:

An international flight

For the malaria parasite,

That she traffics in the virus

And spreads encephalitis,

And all sorts of microbial scum—

And God knows what's to come.

And her thoughts aren't worth a penny,

Or we'd radio those antennae

Atop her hideous head

To tell her when we're bled

All the trouble that she causes

Is in our gains and not our losses.