The Gesture

On the dog's ear, a scrap of filmy stuff
turns out to be
a walking stick, that jade insect, this one scarcely sprung

from the pod of the nest,

not an inch long. I could just see

the eyes, elbows, feet nimble under the long shanks.
I could not imagine it could live
in the brisk world, or where it would live, or how. But
I took it
outside and held it up to the red oak that rises
ninety feet into the air, and it lifted its forward-most
pair of arms
with what in anything worth thinking about would have seemed
a graceful and glad gesture; it caught
onto the bark, it hung on; it rested; it began to climb.

--Mary Oliver