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 