The gnawing locust swarmed while the stripping locust creeped.
They all had been invited to our barren land to feast.
But did they eat the normal fare? The wood, the straw, the hay?
No normal plague upon us fell; instead, these ate the day.

Three fell upon my watch as I ran from truck to house,
And as I watched them suck and gnaw, the sun was going out.
Still they sucked, and soon I saw the sun rise in the east.
I felt my face grow whiskers. I knew I’d missed my sleep.

Inside the house, my wife was crazed with locusts on her mouth.
Instead of time, these locusts fed on warmth, and love, and doubt.
I stood through shadow cycles as the sun set and rose,
And watched the locusts gnaw through my wife’s heart and not her clothes.

As the sun insanely sprinted, my neighbors were consumed.
Some breathed in locusts with their lungs, their lives and fortunes ruined.
Some saw their hopes devoured, and their loved ones left alone.
Some thought to flee the locusts by slipping skin and bones.

And soon we’d lost a month, then half a year or more–
Christ’s reconciled world covered by a locust swarm.
A clicking horde consumes our lives, and still we won’t repent.
When we asked a plague upon us, did we doubt one would be sent?