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.

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