Caterpillar

October 15, 2012

Caterpillar

Caterpillar, you are full of thought:

as every day you crawl across the leaves,

you traverse the pages of the world

and notice everything.  I find you pacing,

tracing lines across the supple skin

of apple blossoms in the delicate spring,

with each slow step remembering their design.

You overlook no detail, miss no trait:

no beautiful thing ever escapes your gaze.

Then at the end, you shed your final skin

to reveal the inevitable chrysalis beneath.

gone, the careful movement of your eyes,

the strange off-rhythm of your tiny steps

as you dissolve into a mess of cells

and then emerge, condemned to chase the sky.

I drag this tired body through the day

with bones that ache and creak, dissatisfied.

an ancient winged thing I have become,

so blind, so distant from the lovely earth.