Glen Enloe Poet Free verse

Caterpillar

Cocking a small blue shovel in her hand,
my four-year-old, Amanda, chops earth
in the garden.  It is warm, a moist thing
to our digging.  We bring forth ocher nails,
a blue shard of stoneware, a white grub
like a marble chip from an ancient city.

We unearth rocks, dark roots, clear green glass,
till pausing, Amanda points her shovel toward
something moving - slowly contracting across
our wreckage.  We watch as it tumbles into
the chasm, spins as if in dance,
seeking a hand, a hold on earth.

I hesitate, watch, as the caterpillar climbs
up from the cup of hole, legs frenzied
with a fear of falling.  No, I start to say
as Amanda tosses dirt back into it, covering
the worm with the finality of darkness.

We watch the stillness, till like Lazarus,
it rises, blooms forth from the earth
to scurry from our ruins into the wet
spring grass, its body writhing, disappearing
into those weeds, ephemeral as that moment,
              our lives and a thousand Parthenons.

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