A LITTLE WORM

We are born…we live…we die…that’s the way it’s supposed to be

We are all bound by the circle of life…and our own mortality.

 

I noticed her as I walked outside…she was hanging from a tree

A little worm…her color green…and she seemed to smile at me.

 

I was confused at first by her greeting…but I returned her smile

then I sat down next to her…and we visited for a while.

 

“Hey there little worm.” I asked. “What brings you here hanging by that thread?”

The little worm smiled as she swayed to and fro, “It was the wind,.” she said.

 

“And I am not a worm I am a caterpillar.” she corrected me with a sigh…

“One day I shall be a moth or, perhaps, a butterfly.”

 

“One day I will be even more beautiful.”

Here she looked up at the sky.

“One day I will have wings…one day…I will fly.”

 

And nether of us could have predicted that would be her final word

because when she finished speaking…she was eaten by a bird.

 

And I felt betrayed by time, deceived…as this caterpillar was cheated…

as her circle of her life was all too soon completed.

 

And once again…a lesson taught…much to my chagrin…

how in some way every life is at the mercy of the wind.

 

How we never know what fate…what destiny lies ahead…

How all our lives, when we stop to think about it, are hanging by a thread.

 

How life will one day end…we don’t know when…or why

How we never know how far we’ll go…or if ever we will fly….

 

But if there is one lesson from this caterpillar I find endlessly redeeming….

It would be wherever we are in the circle of life…

to never stop our dreaming.



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