In his first instar he is so new he is almost
transparent. When I cannot find him, I look
for his peppery frass, turn over a leaf,
and there he is, eating a heart-shaped hole
in the center. In his second instar he is easier
to find, a grain of rice with tiny horns.
In his third he is no bigger than a paperclip,
a little clown wearing prison stripes,
a daredevil who drops from leaf to leaf.
As a fourth instar, he has long loopy antenna
and adolescent potential. He is a muscular
eating machine, his hunger surpassed only
by the fifth who is clearly on a mission.
I can hear him chewing from across the patio,
mowing his way across the largest milkweeds.
Now he is bigger than my little finger and
planning his escape, flying muscles learning
to conserve energy even as he grows.
He zips himself into a chrysalis, and before
the week is old he arrives like a little Houdini.
When he whips his wings open, I imagine
the snap of canvas in the wind. He sails over
the roof and is gone. There is no time for basking,
for sipping on nectar, he has miles to cover.
He was Nature’s wonder long before we met and
never needed my approval. Still, I had hoped
to tell him, I always knew that you could fly.
This poem first appeared in Wings, or Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight (Dos Madres Press, 2020).
—
Cathryn Essinger is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Apricot and the Moon, and Wings, or Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight, both from Dos Madres Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Terrain.org, About Place, and many other journals. She lives in Troy, Ohio where she raises butterflies.
