-the cells responsible for the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly
Remember: they summon no shift
through fear. They are fate-mapping:
swirling into stalks and coils, the thin
pennons we become that make us
rise, but make us delicate. They know
the future. So often, we like to think
what makes us human is our foredoom,
but what makes the Blue, the Hairstreak
is forewinged, something in them pulsing,
knowing flight is coming. The prescience
itself is attacked: the caterpillars’ own being
hates that it knows it will change, won’t
let the secret be. Life can’t all be
eating. Sometimes it is more rhythm,
sorting the body into another frequency
that can grow to unfurl itself: mutilated
at first, the wings crimped by chrysalis,
but waiting in a beam, the limb smooths
to becoming what one can use. I know
there’s more to the air than I can know
or guess, or possibly even ask. Don’t need
to always know: all that’s ever worth adoring
is mystery. What I was is not what I am, but
is, and I love them that make what wanting I’ll be.
Photo by Augustine Mullick on Unsplash
