Caterpillar

The yellow and black caterpillar concertina’s around my wrist. Around and around my wrist it trundles on those stumpy limb nubbins neither veering left or right. It’s a creature unaware of distance and so must constantly search for nearness. Wherever its fuzzy head leads that is its world, only the nearby is myopically absorbed. I pluck it up from its lonely trek, place it onto a mulberry bush, The slinky pauses, then commences to chomp through a dark green leaf – another world to ingest yet more nearness to convert into yellow and black grubbiness. One day, distance will call to its tunnel vision, it will burst apart, as if it were a dark star rent asunder. The far flung will open under a dizziness of wings - both greeting and farewell merging into one topsy-turvy last flutter of glory.