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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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