Caterpillars voraciously eat leaves. The ones that look
like leaves themselves eat in a careful pattern
so there will be no rough evidence. They snip off
half-eaten leaves, so the birds can hardly tell
they’re there. The hairy, the spiny, the poisonous
caterpillars bluster along, leaving a mess.
Tattered leaves everywhere. The birds know
the difference, which ones to eat. I hid in the culvert
when he chloroformed the kittens in a cooking pot.
He should have had the cat spayed, but it cost money.
Now I can see how he was. Then I only saw the kittens
and then not, buried in the yard. There were many
ways I could hide. I could chew the leaves perfectly.
I could quietly place a fistful of daisies on the grave.
My fist was the hairy caterpillar sequestering
its poison. But now it is too late. The breakdown
of that story is like the caterpillar, nothing left
but a nutrient soup. And the butterfly!
That metamorphosis was completely out of my control.
The way it forgave everything. The way it learned
to sip its food, and with its colorless wings
reflected everything back as beautiful, bejeweled.