Caterpillar Song

The Caterpillar Of Phalaena Pini.

Caterpillar Song

Summer and leaves filled me

With a green drowse, now full

Of sleep I must turn

Leaflike, the fine thread

Comes from my lower lip

And fastens to a leaf, I am

Weaving around my fullness

A closing, a slow shuttling

To touch there and there

Where I will dream

All my hearts withering

And changing to a half-remembered

One in the air who quivers

Among leaves, who will know

Night after night by this

Night I spin around us how

Already it stirs

From sleep inside me, gathers

The leaves I have left

In me, how we begin

Together, it grows huge eyes

For me, and we wait

Behind them, it is growing

Shut wings, we wait between them

Night by night after this

Night spun around us, we know

Now is the time to soften

The way ahead for us, it opens,

The wet, shut wings come slowly

Out, they open, the veins

Fill them, they harden

And belong to us, we see

The night with all our eyes

At once, we move our wings

Apart among leaves, the one

Leaf with eyes to open

The night, not falling now

But rising and flying.

David Wagoner

"There where I will dream." How often do we imagine what it's like to wrap up in a chrysalis and change into a moth? To think of being like a caterpillar, feeding on green, growing, "changing to a half-remembered one" (as if there's a seed of something within, something I once was meant to be, and something from my future drawing me), spinning the Night around me. How the caterpillar feeds on leaves, and in time becomes a leaf-like creature, but one "rising and flying" rather than falling and dying. And the element of night? The unknown, hidden world only dimly grasped, where patterns weave us, in our sleep, in our dreams, into something new.

"Shut wings, we wait between them."

And what will we become?