Every once in a while I think I’ll just get rid of all my unread New Yorkers; recycle them all in a big slippery pile in a brown paper bag, and then, and then I sit down and read one. And inevitably, I haul that brown paper bag back up to my room and swear that I’ll only read the cartoons or the poems or just the fiction…
February 11 & 18, 2008’s New Yorker gave me a cartoon with which to make my brother a thank-you card, an article to pass on to a friend, an essay that made me laugh out loud, a quote for my sidebar, and this poem:
A Measuring Worm by Richard Wilbur
This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,
Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.
It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant
To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,
And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.