Order Lepidoptera

Migration’s momentum—automatic, involuntary. Leaves in the wind.

Monarch butterflies convene in the Sierra Madre Mountains to wait out winter. They huddle, covering trees, replacing green. Bringing orange, bringing autumn, bringing senescence.

Whether the rains come off the coast of the Atlantic or Lake Michigan they do not come effervescent, refurbishing. Not spring rain but metallic, devastating, pulling now rice paper thin leaves off trees.

Let them go. Let them go.

Boston sidewalks are peppered with maple leaves. Anthocyanin. Eggplant and apples.

Chicago sidewalks are covered with gingko leaves. Carotenoid. Summer squash and pears.

Even dogs resist the outside when the sky is thick like cream and rain importunate.

They stay

curled

cocooned

on the leather couch
and fake oriental rug.
Sleep comes easy when colors whisper,
humble now, if they speak at all.


Sidewalks are softer. Their edges usually parallel and hard, blurred. The difference between pavement and ribbon of grass that separates sidewalk and street, smudged.


Human migration is not regulated by seasons. A different kind of stirring, we do not follow time tested flight patterns, the path of our ancestors year after year. We only know we must leave the familiar and find our own home.

III.
Chrysalis: From Greek from chrysos gold of Sem origin; a kin to Heb harus gold.
1. A pupa of a butterfly; broadly an insect pupa.
2. A protective covering: A sheltered state or stage of being or growth.

IV.
The fledglings peer over
The edge of the nest, then retreat.
Advance and retreat, retreat and repeat.
The mother circles above chirping.
It’s almost as if the fledglings know
What failure would mean.
When a butterfly takes first flight
It has already lived a life,
It has already known the ground.
Born again from chrysalis
(Leaving a casing not a shell)
The butterfly hangs to harden
Not to hesitate,
Its wings pumped with heniolymph
It flies without thought of falling. •

Order Lepidoptera:

With membranous wings, largely or entirely covered with scales •

Leaves have begun rotting.

With each breath the sweet smell of carbon released permeates the air:
fermentation.

Carbon released not from tail pipes or factories but microbes, bacteria, nematodes.
To them, these soggy leaves are vital, not detritus of autumn.

VII.
Caterpillars possess a pair of mandibles;
That is to say a mouth
Capable of opening and closing,

Of eating leaves
As they crawl along branches
And dirt, easy members of the Class of Insecta.

Butterflies belong more to the Class of Aves
Than insects, the realm of birds—flying silent
Rather than buzzing incessantly.

To migrate from the domain
Of the crawling to the soaring
Comes with a cost:

The mandibles lock,
Morph from mouth to proboscis,
Fuse together to form a straw.

A coma patient incapable
Of feeding herself, of breathing
But through tubes down her throat.

Lips mute and pursed:
The price to pay for wings
And beauty.

VIII.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Superfamily: Papilionoidea
Family: Nymphalidae
Subfamily: Danainae
Tribe: Danaini
Genus: Danaus
Species: Danaus plexippus

Even with eyes to the ground, few notice the dying butterflies or that trees start forming buds now, just after they have lost their last leaves.

The squirrel’s tail twitches double time. Cheeks overstuffed gathering the last nuts, hiding them in trees and dirt. Digging false stashes to prevent discovery.

Butterflies open and close their wings slowly. Breathing slows when falling asleep. Kneel next to these dying insects; remain still as they crawl onto your palm.

The sun is too distant to warm their wings. They are no different than leaves, fluttering to the ground. Prepared to spend winter in rot and decay.


Cocoon: From French cocon, from Prov coucoun from Latin Coccum kermes (thought to be a gall or berry) from Greek kokkosberry kermes.
1. An envelope, often largely of silk, which an insect larva forms about itself and in which it passes the pupa stage.
2. Any of various other protective coverings produced by animals.

XI.
Language is anything but arbitrary.
The sound of words,
The way they slosh around mouths,

Roll over tongues
And drip, or jump, past lips
Mimics the symbolized.

Köhler, Ramachandran and Hubbard know
Show people a jagged line
Ask them to name it

And, whether English or Tamil speakers,
They will choose Kiki over Bouba every time.
Ask anyone to hold the words

Butterfly and moth in their mouths
And the butterfly will emerge
Through delicately parted lips

As from a chrysalis,
While the moth turns to dust
Trapped between tongue and teeth.

•

The insects are dying.
•
In the North East, people are guarded, distant. They hold collars over ears. They cover faces with scarves. They do not stop to say, “Hello,” to say, “How are you?”
In the approaching chill butterflies let down their guard. They lie idly on Chicago city sidewalks, no longer interested in phlox and flight.

In the approaching chill ladybugs line ceilings. Clustered on windows sills and in corners.

Squirrels in the attic.

Crickets by the hearth.

With eyes closed there is no difference between Chicago and Boston in fall.
In either place heaviness of footsteps is replaced by ephemeral floating of shoes among leaves.

schwsh schwsh schwsh

With eyes open brown stones become grey stones. Alleys grow like roots behind houses.

Lake Michigan goes on for miles, but the air lacks sodium chloride, docks and cobblestone.

The streets are wide in Chicago. The streets are narrow in Boston. Carved by cow paths not city planners, they curve organic, confusing.

They mimic the Charles,
mimic the Merrimack.

XIII.
Fish scales are beads
Loosely strung together,
Draped across bones and meat.
Butterfly scales are velvet
Taughtly stretched
Over delicate veins.

Moths too belong
To the order Lepidoptera
But their monochromatic
State of being
Does not yield velvet.

•

Moth larvae’s skin does not grow.
As the caterpillar grows with each leaf it devours its skin, now too tight, must be purged. When full grown, larvae weave cocoons from silk as a spider weaves a web, around itself. More than merely an issue of semantics these gossamer threads do not create the precious object.
Unsightly.
Cut them out of trees.
The moth emerges at night
and flies unblinking into the flame.

XV.
Etymology of Entomology
Butterfly
Pappillon
Farfella
Schmetterling
Papalote
Mariposa
Kipepeo
Pepeo
Nizugunzigu
Wrrp
Vinder
Borboleta

XVI.
Migration or maybe emigration.
Most species of butterflies that travel do not return, prevented not by strength of desire, but strength of muscles: wings so thin cannot fly for long.
We bring our language with us.
Packed in suitcases between pants and layers and layers of socks.
Evidence of origins.

XVII.
Butterfly Middle English buterflie, Old English buttorfleoge

Language is anything but arbitrary.
History reveals more than simple etymology.
Back in the Beowulf days
It was believed that butterflies were witches
Come to steal the cream and butter.
Batting their wings as a girl bats her eyelashes,
Foolish, spastic
They hovered around the churns.
Witches don’t have time to make butter.

•

The rain stops.
Wind and walking brush leaves off sidewalks, piles form along edges.
No longer blankets, pillows now.
The sidewalks are stained.
Leaves imprint drying pavement.
Modern fossilization.
Each breath in stings lungs, each breath out, smoke: the first frost is coming soon.

The days are void of bird-song, quiet. Those finches and sparrows that have not flown south are taciturn, too cold to so much as hum. The butterflies are dead.

Stay inside.

The ground, merely damp for the moment will soon be slick—not pavement, glass. Only a few leaves still produce enough auxin to retain their grip on the tree. The other leaves are languid; their edges curl as they dry on the ground, sleeping and sacrificial. The sun too has grown lazy. No longer able to reach the top of the sky, high noon betrayed. Shadows are long for the entire day. Sweaters yield to jackets and gloves.

XIX.

Affix
Split
Wriggle
Wriggle
Writhe
Discard
Dry
Harden
Wait

XX.
Tree’s roots grip tightly onto earth, embed
Into soil, like a child’s coiling
Fingers in her mother’s hair.
Dirt provides stability, minerals dissolved
By water, water which crawls
Up xylem, clinging to walls
Polarity of molecules, capillary action.
Trees understood first
Spreading fingers, palms up
Towards the sun makes all the difference.
Wings too know how to absorb heat
Use it for muscle movements for flight
How to uncurl lips like roots
And drink the dirt.

•

Butterfly larvae shed skin 4-5 times before proceeding to the second instar: pupa. A chrysalis forms under the last layer of skin. Upon the final molting the chrysalis is exposed, skin discarded. No longer larvae now pupa. Attached with viscous muscle the pupa waits until inner organs are strong enough to break through harden cuticle, waits until the jade case has lost its jewel tone, turned black with the bug inside. The insect then hangs: large body with small shriveled wings more beetle than butterfly, imago.

XXII.
Language is how history haunts.
You can declare independence
But the language will persist.
It is only slang that differentiates the
invader from the invaded.
Language that lives outside
Of the dictionary, amongst taste buds,
grooves of fingerprints and hair follicles.
It is only when you say Flutterby
Instead of Butterfly
That we are truly free.

•

No more butterflies now only bits of newspaper floating through the air, a rustle reminiscent of previous seasons. Sound is different: quiet just before dawn all day. Sound waves travel slower than light and even slower now. They do not bounce easily off snow. Absorption.

Grey is the densest color. In the cold, butterfly eggs incubate. Under snow, under rotting leaves, they wait, no different than seeds. Peach pits from the neighbor’s tree lie on frozen soil, those that didn’t get carried away by squirrels or chewed by dogs. They need this frost. Without it they will not sprout.

This is the season of wait.