Leavings by Anne Covell

I first became interested in the Japanese beetle during a particularly hot and dry summer in Iowa City. Perhaps it was a result of the season or of my having moved to a new home ripe with some of the beetles’ most preferred foods, but I became overwhelmed by its pervasive, relentless assault on my garden. As the summer wore on, I began finding leaf remains gathering at the bases of trees and blowing in the wind as if it were fall. Their presence was out of place; out of season. But when I began to look more closely, what struck me was the beauty of form that the beetle had inadvertently left behind. Starved of oxygen and drained of color, these leaf skeletons would soon crumble and return to the earth. But, for a moment, they existed between realms, and reflected a loss that spoke to the complexity of the natural world. Somehow, it seems, even an act of destruction can leave something beautiful in its wake.