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.