The Caterpillar

Image source: Center for Urban Agriculture

This is the moment
the climbing caterpillar
reaches the end of the branch;
where, casting about
in a near-sighted search
for a path upon which to continue
its accustomed peregrination,
it turns at last to the other side of the branch,
and returns the way it came,
through territory all familiar,
but at the same time
estranged by its reversed perspective,
so that nothing is certain but
a vague yet unignorable unease.