I can provide pictures if interested.
But why would you want to see
pictures of our potato bugs, the ones
that congregate in the mossy drip
under our air conditioner, the ones
that my son calls Tater Pals, or
Tater Tots if they’re small? He and I
go out in the morning to our front gate
to pick up our newspaper and greet
the day—and the potato bugs. He is
often barefoot, wincing over hard
little fruits from a certain tree.
We say they’re nuts; we’re wrong
about this, too. Just like, of course,
the potato bugs, which are actually
sow bugs or pill bugs or roly polies.
But one day we called them
potato bugs, and thus they remain
potato bugs, and an entire
architecture of words has been
built around them, tiny scaffolds
to protect small, gray cousins
of lobsters, not even bugs at all.
Be sure to check out Open Link Night at dVerse Poets every Tuesday p.m.
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 
very cool, the way we assign meanings to sounds, how we each build a vocabulary of meanings
I love the way you use your families ‘home’ language here. Every family has some unique – if inaccurate – names for things; they can be really confusing to non-family members.
ha, we have always called them that as well, and we seem to have them in abundance this year. as bugs go, they’re kind of fun…
Ah I remember playing with those as a child. Great poem, thanks for sharing 🙂
Love the image of tiny scaffolds of protection – a pleasure to read.
Anna :o]