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Lane Parker

Preparations

I go out back to check on my caterpillar. It seems like a million years since I found it hanging upside down from the twig of a bush in the back yard. I'm just a little kid living in the suburbs; I'd never seen a caterpillar doing this, so I'd snapped off the twig with the caterpillar and put it in a metal pail. To keep the caterpillar from escaping. To see what it would do.

Over the next few days the caterpillar wrapped itself in a kind of shell. It's been forever since then.

Now I peer into the pail and find the shell split open and the caterpillar gone. I'm dumbstruck. Completely amazed. I've heard of magic tricks but this is something else.

    young oaks--
    boys throw acorns
    in fading light

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