Caterpillar Song

I once saw a caterpillar. A caterpillar with 64 black strips between its ivy pillows 0f satin. It heaved them through the world, over concrete and dust. I did not talk its language, nor have I seen the world it sees. I didn't have too. I felt and shared the caterpillar's exhaustion, harnessed to its 64 stripes, that held him back from flying. There was anger in his slithering and despair without a face to it. Once with a grimace, once with a smile it tumbled over the cracks of the fractured grey, up and down, over tremendous heights. I knelt next to it, sharing the raindrops that have started to soften the summer-road. In our longing for more, we shared it - I felt it, I saw the caterpillar in its unarmored form. Held my 5 fingers to let it touch them, grip onto them, so we find him a leave or other breathing green. At first, seeing the giant dome of doom, it started to swirl around itself. Panic became its unmerciful master, pulling the strings in a cruel manner. It twisted and turned on its back and over again. Again and again. Kind words it did not hear, so I withdrew, in bad faith and worse conscious. Sad it made me to be rejected by the blind beauty that housed in those 64 stripes. First it was a bleak sadness but all of sudden, out of a black well, the serpent of spite slid up and set my breast ablaze. Anger took a hold of me and with aimless rage and to my surprise I spat on the ground right next to the caterpillar. Turning my head I set afoot on the alley back home in between the orderly rows of blossoming cherry trees and enfolding men and women. It was spring - in some hearts more than others. Mad-eyed I searched for meeting eyes to draw their lids down to my level. It was out of my control. With some it worked, and others only shone more radiant.

At home, in the tiny room with a tilted roof and a balcony, I turned the heat up to 7 and opened a beer. Lined in all the palettes of pink until blue, the day-to-night sky promised a restful night and with the last drop of beer the last ocean drop fell onto the metal-plate. I sat on the balcony, and looked out on the open. With the third spoon of spiraling pasta an impeccable humming started to fade in. Underneath my apartment lived a family with a gifted pianist in its rows. Who it was, I do not know to this day, but soothing sounds of playing became part of the sonic interior. First it completed the peace, but then gaining more and more in substance and bass and noise, it started to rattle next to the brutal silence. There was melody to within the those shy symphonies, and its beauty, first became unbearable. It wound around itself its core only to unfold again in perfect symmetry and mistake. I didn't touch my steaming food until the first spots went dry and the immersing melody suddenly seized into nowhere. With a snap of a finger I was there again from where I left, but something was different, something has changed.

The night was as restful as promised by the loyal sky. Only once I woke, floating in between webs and lines, hearing an echo of the forever seized melody. The morning gifted me the sun, and the coffee brew more fragrant. The sadness has dried on the walls, leaving a stain that will stay. I rolled a cigarette - the fridge stopped its roaring as soon as the paper stuck. Again, I climbed on out on my balcony and the mother of two on the terrace facing mine, cut her variety of plants into an foreseeing order. I took a deep puff and a sip. The white church up on the mountain from where I lived was dipped in generous bronze and the people rustled left and right on the street underneath me. No butterfly landed on my balcony grille that or any other day. Still, I knew it was out there. And I hope it forgives the spitting.