The blog Flowers for Socrates said August 20 was World Mosquito Day, and if you missed out on your usual celebration (ahem), here’s an Updike poem on the subject that blogger Nona Blyth Cloud posted that day.

Updike had us at “I was to her a fragrant lake of blood / From which she had to sip a drop or die / A reservoir, a lavish field of food”.

“The Mosquito” was first published in the June 11, 1960 edition of The New Yorker.