This from "What Love Comes To; New & Selected Poems," by Ruth Stone
Yes, Think
Mother, said a small tomato caterpillar to a wasp,
why are you kissing me so hard on my back?
You'll see, said the industrious wasp, deftly inserting
a package of her eggs under the small caterpillar's skin.
Every day the small caterpillar ate and ate the delicious
tomato leaves. I am surely getting larger, it said to itself.
This was a sad miscalculation. The ravenous hatched
wasp worms were getting larger. O world, the small
caterpillar said, you were so beautiful. I am only a small
tomato caterpillar, made to eat the good tomato leaves.
Now I am so tired. And I am getting even smaller. Nature
smiled. Never mind, dear, she said. You are a lovely link
in the great chain of being. Think how lucky it is to be born.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
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2 comments:
Y.I.K.E.S!!!
Sure makes one wonder where one's own self is in the great chain of being, you know, like virus incubator, worm food (at the end, one would hope, but that certainly does not apply in some parts of the world), or mother, if female (think calcium leaching from bones where there is inadequate nutrition to support fetal growth)...
Then there are the emotional implications!
Well, great food for thought Ann!
The great wheel. We're all part of it, working it, being worked upon. Pretty amazing, when you stop to think of it, which this poet did, in a mordantly humorous way.
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