A Caterpillar on the Desk

Lifting my coffee cup, I notice a caterpillar crawling over

my sheet of ten-cent airmail stamps. The head is black as a

Chinese box. Nine soft accordions follow it around, with a

waving motion, like a flabby mountain. Skinny brushes

used to clean pop bottles rise from some of its shoulders.

As I pick up the sheet of stamps, the caterpillar advances

around and around the edge, and I see his feet: three pairs

under the head, four spongelike pairs under the middle

body, and two final pairs at the tip, pink as a puppy's hind

legs. As he walks, he rears, six pairs of legs off the stamp,

waving around in the air! One of the sponge pairs, and the

last two tail pairs, the reserve feet, hold on anxiously. It

is the first of September. The leaf shadows are less ferocious

on the notebook cover. A man accepts his failures more

easily-or perhaps summer's insanity is gone? A man notices

ordinary earth, scorned in July, with affection, as he settles

down to his daily work, to use stamps.