Many Legs – Ingrid Bruck

Self-isolating during corona virus, home feels like a trap, a curse not shared by insects. They are not halted by human fear. Not the woolly caterpillar crawling across the driveway. Not the inch worm that pushes and pulls, shoving the length of its middle body, front and back legs heaving a dolly that carries a mountain of self. Not daddy-long-legs, eight legs tickling a path up my bare arm. Not the water spider in a still creek dancing circles on black glass. Not the millipede with a thousand legs that I leave alone because it stings. In the empty driveway, I scoop a rippling stripped furry body into my palm. Just like me sheltering in, the caterpillar’s first action is retreat. He hides—a tight body curl forms a hairy ball. I’ve always liked wooly caterpillars, the kind I’d place on my baby brother. They’d stretch and crawl until he cried for our mother and she ordered me to take away that caterpillar. I place this one back in the dirt. The long body extends, many legs pump, motion ripples, wavelets flow from head to toe. Whether in lockdown or bed ridden with the virus, human minds dream the freedom of many legs.

locked in the dark
2020 package
of snow peas

© Ingrid Bruck 2020

Bio:

Ingrid Bruck is a poet from the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania. She writes a monthly column called “Pearl Diving” (featuring online writer resources) for Between These Shores and is a member of the BTSA Editorial Team. Current work appears in Failed Haiku, Halcyon Days, Quatrain.Fish and Poetry Hall. www.ingridbruck.com

Donation Appeal:

Throughout June and July, we will be presenting on this web site work by poets and artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you will find these works relevant, comforting and inspiring as we all cope with the economic and health-related fallout.

As you view the work on this site each day, we would like to encourage you to donate to the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC). Their mission “ is to feed our neighbors in need by providing dignified access to supplemental groceries. AFAC is seeing a record number of families due to the COVID-19 pandemic as families who never thought they would ever be in need are now showing up at our doors for much needed food.”  And, in keeping with our hunger-focused efforts, you may also want to visit the Poetry X Hunger website where poems by many poets are posted and are being used by anti-hunger organizations.”

Please consider donating to AFAC. If you do, let us know which poet or artist inspired you so we can send you a personal thank you.

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