I sat there on the grass close to a bush, away from the sidewalk where the boys had asked me to move as they began kicking a ball up and down the hill. I sat there with sweat dripping into my eyes, grateful for the breeze, stretching after four laps around the pond. I sat there leaning forward over my legs, stretching my old-man muscles, staring at the grass between my knees.
Green grass imagine that. The rains have been merciful. And the grass is green this year. And soft to sit in.
I sat there looking at the grass, feeling the breeze, cooling down, listening to the boys and the other kids playing on the playground and riding their bikes in circles. I sat there looking down.
And I saw a small caterpillar inching its way up the side of a blade of grass.
With each minuscule move it made, it would crane its head and circle around reaching for another blade of grass just out of reach. It was a tiny, tiny thing, that caterpillar. The gap between those two blades of grass was five less than a centimeter. The green worm arched its back and stretched its body as far as it could reaching for that other blade of grass that it knew was there, just out of reach.
And then it moved on, failing to reach that other blade of grass but finding a nice round, green leaf of a pony foot growing just millimeters away.
“Sorry mister,” one of the boys said as he came to get their ball that had rolled up against me.
I smiled. He smiled and rolled the ball back to the others.
I looked back down. The caterpillar was gone. Gone somewhere into that jungle of grass and pony foot leaves.