However, my having a summer cold facilitated my introduction to two tiny new "friends".
Having heard it was a good idea to sunbathe for 20 minutes between 10:00am and 2:00pm to get a free fix of the amazing anti-viral Vitamin D, I was laying face down on a towel on some one's back patio.
Concrete looks really interesting from just a few inches away. It's got lots of tiny rocks embedded in it. Grains of sand, I guess is what they are.
Suddenly a little dot moved across the cement. A burnt-orange little creature. I mean this guy was tiny! His entire body was about the size of an ant's head.
Then another dot appeared suddenly on the white towel near my head. Uh-oh... this one jumped. A flea? I found him again, and no... this was no flea. A jumping creature, yes, but his jumps were only an inch in distance, and he didn't look like a flea. He was too round, and I could see his tiny legs. This guy was black in color. As tiny as the first one... perhaps even smaller than the head of a common Argentinian ant.
Watching these two little guys reminded me of a poem that I remember my Dad reading to us kids when we were very small. Over the years he'd share it again and again on various occasions.
Since I'd heard it so often and when so young it never really had much meaning to me.
Until now.
A Considerable Speck
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think.
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt –
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn't want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered; I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.
I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise.
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.
I can clearly remember him reading the poem for the first time, and me not understanding it, and Daddy explaining that it was a "mite" that was crawling across the man's paper.
ReplyDelete"What's a mite?"
Daddy explained that it was a very tiny bug, much smaller than an ant, that you could barely see.
It was a fascinating concept! I didn't see a "mite" in person until some time later, perhaps even years.
Nice! I love your attention to detail and inquisitive mind.
ReplyDeleteI love this poem! "clearly with an intelligence I dealt". There is so much going on outside of ourselves, that it's absolutely mind-boggling and absolutely humbling. Cuz all the trillions of mites out there really don't care what's going on with you (unless you are trying to drown them in ink) and that's some hefty perspective coming from such a little guy! :)
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