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.
©1997, Ruth Stone. Published in
Prairie Schooner Vol. 71, No.1, Spring 1997.
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