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Ed Meek is a Somerville poet residing in Davis Square. His latest book of poetry is titled High Tide.

Malevolent Design

             Slinky caterpillars, fuzzy brown and red-dotted–

fingers with half a dozen legs,

drop from above onto your neck

and crawl down your shirt

in search of food.

They remain hungry

                           even after denuding

                           every deciduous tree in sight

                           until the trunks stand naked

                           like skinny kids in the middle of summer.

                           Now they’re stressed like the rest of us,

                           susceptible to fungus and disease.

                           Intelligent design profiles butterflies

                           with their sun-splashed yellow

                           and orange polka-dotted wings.

                           They could well be queens

                           or kings of their domain.

                           But what kind of god

                           would fashion gypsy moths?

                           Each stage of growth worse:

                           from egg to larva to pupa to moth.

                           Fecund females lay 1000 eggs

                           beneath the unsuspecting bark of trees.

                           You’d think their saving grace

                           might be that by summer’s end

                           they die—thwacking into window screens

                           desperately searching like the rest of us

                           for the light. But no.

                           They’ll be back again

                           to feast on our canopy.

— Ed Meek

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