Beatrice caterpillared her way through life,
cocooned away in a dune shack
on Provincetown’s National Sea Shore.
Aware of her eccentricities,
town criers and town folk alike
let her live her reclusive life.
In the summer of nineteen seventy-nine
crowds gathered outside the Lobster Pot,
salivating at the new restaurant in town.
Suddenly, mouths agape,
they gawked at the brightly clad gal
who fluttered out its door.
Dressed in beaded striped chemise
gauzy wings mysteriously attached,
she looked vaguely familiar.
She smiled tossing menus to the crowd,
sand clinging to ginger ringlets,
long eyelashes and sunburned knees.
Beatrice had left the beach
and butterflied her way into town.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sarah asks us to write a poem in which we verbify an animal or two. Among the examples she gives are dogging someone’s footsteps and badgering someone. She provides us with a list of animals to verbify, or we may choose our own. I chose the caterpillar and butterfly.
Photo is from one of our many annual two-week stays in Provincetown, on the very tip of Cape Cod. The “sandgrains of truth” in this tall tale of a poem are 1) the Lobster Pot first opened in Provincetown in 1979; and 2) there are indeed dune shacks on the National Seashore in Provincetown. People still use them today and they are considered by many as historical treasures. At different times, Jackson Pollock, E.E.Cummings, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac and Tennessee Williams lived in them.
lillian the home poet 
Makes my mouth water for LOBSTER 🦞!
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Ah yes….lobster served so many ways at the Lobster Pot!
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Love how Beatrice metamorphosed! Great verbing. 😊
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Glad you enjoyed!
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I enjoyed your tall tale with sandgrains of truth, Lill! ‘Caterpillared’ and ‘cocooned’ are excellent animal verbs, and the story cheered me up no end. Hurrah for Beatrice!
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Beatrice beautified! 🙂
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“Beatrice caterpillared her way through life,
cocooned away in a dune shack”
Enjoyed your sand grains of truth. Thanks for dropping by my blog today
Much💖love
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A great poem, Lillian. I love the photo also!
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I like Beatrice.❤️
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Go, Beatrice! Sometimes we really need to cocoon if we’re going to butterfly.
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I didn’t know about dune shacks, Lillian, but I enjoyed meeting Beatrice 🙂
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We closed a lobster pot up, October 11, last day of Tourist Season in Maine. I’m glad Beatrice butterflied her way back to downtown; her mama may have after laying her egg.
My family is the Fletchers, ours migrated from Maine to Nebraska, I further migrated it down to Texas.
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Surprise, surprise!! I had very few visitors as I had the wrong URL posted for over a day. If you care to read my post, I myself like it a lot, it is here,
http://jimmiehov6.blogspot.com/2023/05/gambling-poem-for-dverse.html.
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caterpillared, cocooned and butterflied… You did this beautifully, Lillian. Glorious poem from a real place stamped 1979… What fun! Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed reading this tall take. xoxo
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Such gorgeous use of verbs in this one, Lillian! I can picture those people gathering outside the Lobster Pot. ❤️❤️❤️
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Love how you used the verbs – brilliant 🙌
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A splendid transformation!
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Great post
What a beautiful poem! Your use of verbs to describe Beatrice’s transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly is so vivid and engaging. I was curious about the inspiration behind her character – was she based on a real person you observed in Provincetown or purely fictional?
Anette Walsh
BestDogsStuff.com
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