To Autumn, Creeping

It's autumn and it's caterpillar season.

Last March I had thought they were an anomaly,

But now I have proof of a trend

All the way down the y axis of the paperbark graph.

Moulting over the yard like the neighbourhood cat,

The leaves' soft ripple a thousand caterpillars munching,

Their excrement scattered like ashes over the garden path.

I cannot walk in bare feet for fear-

They crawl up the shed, over the washing line,

Nestling themselves inside shoes: primordial creatures overstepping their place.

The birds have been scared away by the sheer enormity of the task.

The tree stripped bare, leaving skeletal fingers clawing at the sky-

They ravage.

Autumn vexes me with its creeping plagues.

I worry over chemicals and chainsaws,

And the wattlebird who nests every year in the tree,

Leaving us its nest

And the promise of return

In spring.