Shield Bugs Poem by Douglas Scotney

I was assiduous
organizing my collection.

Had you not been told
what they were,
you might have thought
they were trees and stars,

or an orchard,
a small one of nine large trees,
three to a row,

or a large one of forty-five small conical trees
in nine groups of five,
three to a row,

or, taking part in a contest
to find the largest possible number of trees,
you could add the two together
and have fifty four
and think you had them all.

Some bright spark,
a contestant,
got the idea to replace the lot with wind turbines.

Someone was sure the turbines had been there
before the shield bugs.

Another, threw theory into chaos:
while agreeing that
a tree can be made of stars,
he also asserted,
a star can be made of trees!

Within a steady state of coexistence
each possibility pulsed
in and out of sense.