I just picked up a copy of Through the Forest by David Wagoner, and I encountered this poem for the first time. He’s a fine observer of nature, and this one strikes me more than his other poems by its embodiment of the caterpillar’s experience, rather than reportage from the perspective of a human being encountering nature. You might say this is “deep pastoral” in that the human experience becomes one with what it absorbs? These are just first thoughts. It’s a beatiful poem that I’m sure to read again and again.