050322b

Maturity


we’d been on this world about 11 years,
that spring the natives emerged
from their burrows, very hungry,
like caterpillars from their eggs,
except bigger, hard-shelled, and spiny,
must of the crops went the first day,
but they were omnivores:
sheep and pigs...gone,
we shot plenty of them,
but they were hard to kill,
most colonists took refuge
in the main dome,
those who could get there,
but the poly wasn’t tougher than their jaws,
the shuttle lifted, half empty,
a dozen clinging to its hull,
A few of us hoped they couldn’t climb,
but with those jointed spiny legs
they ran up the trunks,
and I? They couldn’t bite through my case;
I sit in a devastated clearing,
waiting for my battery to die.