At the valley
Of butterflies
In Rhodes, Greece
I encountered
Nature's love affair
Feisty flowers
Rainbow colors
Flying gorgeously everywhere
Beyond anybody's reach
Fluttering here and there
Once the caterpillars
Magically turned into animated fairies
Gently hugging the trees
With their soft and fragile wings
Their inexplicable performance
Has fully mesmerized
Thousands of travelers
Enjoying the splendors
Of this world
And to be one of them
I am so gratified

She walks a path with one eye open
She follows a path with one eye closed
Connecting the strings that float around
Like caterpillars
Dangling
From trees
Squirming on their silk
She crawls underneath them
Un-wanting to not disturb the dance
Until she smells the wildflowers.
The other eye closes
Still crawling the path
Luckily,
The bugs have warn it down enough
To follow with her hands and nose.
When she felt the wildflowers on her face
She opened that eye
Excitedly she pealed open the other.
When she heard nothing
She was amazed
In the distance she could see waves crashing through the wildflowers
Once again her world was absent of light.
This time she held her breath.
She laid in those wildflowers
For a long time.
So long her fingers and toes sprouted roots pulling her deep inside the soil,
Grounding her.

you will thrive in your own cocoon—
legless arthropod wriggling out
of its leaved shell, crunching
on the stem of a marigold’s shrivel.
you crawl up the leaves like they’re
the steps of a winding staircase,
circling and circling to one day
step out of your cocoon.

you are your own skin—
a wing ripped in figure
eights of formative tearing.
at the bottom of a
wind-leaned green tower,
you are torn down as if starting all
over again, away from the pace of
a hundred other caterpillar’d creatures.

you are not quite a monarch butterfly,
not yet the zebra-patterned black and white,
but you bloom in the form of a familiar marigold, a daisy’d curve—
thriving as a flower, swaying and alive.
you must visit the filial leaves and trace
their veins gently.

soon you will thrive in your own cocoon;
as those plant’d seeds will
soon leave legless arthropods wriggling—
for how would a caterpillar’s cocoon wither
without your leaves crinkling beneath it?

Two monarchs cross paths
dancing around eachother.
With words so airy,
one should know to be wary
of what will be said next.

"How does your son fair?"
"Fairs as well as yours I presume."
"Yours always had a knack for flair."
"Yours always could wow a room."

Disguised insults spoken.
Each compliment flapped away with wings
that carry the monarch to their next test.
Where they'll see which flowers they like best.
To gather in support of their queens.

"You know what would be tragic?"
"Why do you continue to speak?"
"If a son were to fall to magic,
before his heart could take a beat."

The two monarchs parted ways.
Promises rolling off their tongues
as sweet as the nectar they drank.
But were designed to attack the other's rank.
Their success depends on the other's defeat.

Conversation stalls as the monarchs fly home.
On wings decorated so finely.
Each of their thoughts seem to turn towards their sons
Just caterpillars before their transformations.
Weaving their chrysalis with determination.

Though they're far apart
the monarchs speak the same words

"I fear for you, my son, in this great world,
Our reign can never last for long.
But I wish for you to have your chance
To encapture the world in a trance
With a grace bestowed upon your wings
I wish for you to make others sing.
For I've seen the tragedy of the other king
Just before transformation
I saw a caterpillar die in its chrysalis."

"I saw a caterpillar die in its chrysalis,"

"I saw a caterpillar die..."

"My son, that has made all the difference."