Caterpillars

shuffling with a common ripple
the journey is futile
for these caterpillars
these tiny furry travellers
are no match for the tyres
no match for the two tonne trucks
rolling around, between and over them

hunching their hopes up
they enter the grey desert of the road
crawling toward catastrophe
they are oblivious, 
ignorant of their imminent flattened fate
delivered to them by blind, wheeled giants

almost everywhere I cycle
they are on another pilgrimmage
from an unknown A to B
and their carcasses litter the streets,
their tiny bodies sacrificed to life's struggle

and I ponder 

yet somehow, despite the odds
some of these legs carry them to safety,
on to other struggles and reproduction
and more tiny travellers will live and die
taking on the journey of life