After the dinosaurs lay down in their fossil beds
and the ice ages shift from Pleistocene to Holocene,
some eleven thousand years of weather ago,
there walks into my apartment this millipede,
no doubt as a result of the wettest month of May
on recent record, Lakeland and Venice both reporting.
With his elongated reddish body, segmented,
millions of legs, slow choreographed, determined
stride, he follows me around like a new puppy,
while I unload the dishwasher, feed and water
the cat (he climbs on the wall to observe this).
He shadows me down the hall as I do laundry.
With every chore in every room, he is there
moving steadily catching my psyche; he stops
in front of the printer stand, that was unpacked
months ago and stacked in what seems as many
pieces as he has legs. Like him, I am balanced,
slow moving, one foot in front of the other,
mostly blind, a forward thinking late bloomer.
I take my direction from insects, the rain and Mars.
