A bus stop crowd, nervously fidgeting in the green rain of summer, blooming umbrellas.
The language is babel - the language of running water and flying insects, a language which rolls from the tongue without effort, babel.
Grouped as they are, an umbrella topped caterpillar, legs protruding from each section, the busstop crowd sighs impatiently, simultaneously complaining about shopping, parking, prices, bills and snail trails.
A girl at the front, a caterpillar with long chestnut (or wood) coloured hair, and a lipsticked smile. And at the rear, a pair of faded jeans and a wallet.
The caterpillar speaks babel, and yet there is a rhythm pumping beneath the water, above the sweet-loving insects, a melody surrounding the crowd like a silken cocoon, beating the word Babel babel, mispronounced and tolling.
A song sung to the beat of the rain.
A song to make things happen.
Metamorphosis, and a question - can a busstop crowd sprout wings?
In answer, a hiss and a burst of warm, mechanised air. A bus arrival, deflating the sectioned caterpillar, revealing its knobbly, hairy backbone of babel slightly broken, the rhythm catching and unspinning the cocoon, leaving a thin caterpillar winding its way into a red (admittedly bus-shaped) apple, surrounded by rain.
Perhaps it is the lack of metamorphosis which causes the driver to drop his coins in alarm. A kind-hearted chestnut with a lipsticked grin bends down to help him, and the caterpillar loses its head and rushes on past to desection itself - and rest its feet.
Leaving a pair of walleted jeans to help a chestnut and a driver to pick up spilled coins in summer rain, while the bus mutters and beats out the rhythm of mispronounced babel with its engine coughing as eyes meet and lipstick curves into a smile. A silken cocoon thread wraps itself around two of the three strangers in the glittering coin dust, and sighs with relief as it makes ends meet. Babel.