photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Outpost

Who cares
if I swim naked in my pool?
All other human occupants
have left this neighborhood behind,
leaving more room
for possums, skunks,
birds, scorpions, spiders
and me.

I keep a closer company with them
than I do with any human these days.
This week, I talk to the large caterpillar
who seems to sprout two crystals from his crown
as he deserts his usual branch
on the Virginia Creeper vine
to sit for a day on the Olmec head
that guards my swimming pool.

Back and forth, back and forth I pass,
adding a look at him to my lap routine.
For one long afternoon,
he sits still—like Alice’s caterpillar,
but hookah-less,
meditating on his stone perch.

If he were on my Virginia Creeper,
I’d be repositioning him
to the empty lot next door, but here
he seems to be a guest; and so some etiquette
keeps me from altering his placement
as he sits on his stone outpost, moving his suction cups in sequence
now and then, only to alter his direction, not his territory.

Perhaps I’ve stayed too long
in this one place.
That wandering poet within me
may have somewhere it thinks I need to go.
If it creates a good alternative,
I might follow in much the same way
that I have come to this point
in my poem.
Blindly, in a maze of words,
open to what comes next.

The Word of the Day is Outpost. Both the story behind this poem and the photo itself are factual. I’ve never been able to figure out those crystals growing out of this hummingbird moth caterpillar’s head. I’ve removed and repositioned hundreds of them out of my vine over the years and never seen another one sporting this phenomenon. Nor have I ever seen one stray from the vines on their own volition. Why this one came to be sitting on the large Olmec stone carving at the end of my pool is a further mystery. It is the only time that I’ve ever transported a caterpillar back to the vine instead of removing it and taking it down to the lot below my house.