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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Butterflies, Part One



I love butterflies. It seems silly to say, because doesn't everyone? I feel like I should have picked something diverse as a favorite creature, like the kangaroo or the newt, not the obvious favorite of 8-year-old girls. But that doesn't change the fact that I love butterflies. I draw them almost constantly when I am in meetings. I have covered the walls of my office with pictures of them. I love their colors, their seeming weightlessness, and more than anything, the symbolism behind them. Something so ethereal, delicate, and graceful, used to be a fat, fuzzy worm! That worm then lay dormant, seemingly dead in a coffin which it designed for itself, and then, in an amazing show of natural magic, "Ta-da!" out crawls the majestic butterfly. They symbolize re-birth, freedom, and beauty. They are personally symbolic for me because right now, I feel an awful lot like a chrysalis- getting my hours, working too much, always away from home and feeling...constrained, tied down, restless...

The butterfly reminds me that life will not always be that way. To quote the well-known Randy Crawford song, covered by Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge- "One day I'll fly away, leave all this to yesterday..."

So today, in honor of my beloved butterflies, I will be posting a few pieces I have written, just scribbles, really, on their theme. I hope you enjoy them.


I.
Some days my heart speaks in cliches,



as I dream of flying off, weightless,


like a butterfly,


free from the weight of everyday constructs,


the prison of my own design.




Let me fly into the great blue sky


and feel the wind on my face,


soaring and free,


putting the weight of the world behind me.


II.
I am Chrysalis.
I wait out the weather, cocooned,
dreaming of the day my wings are unfurled and I can finally be free...
Until the Spring, I must remain in this prison of my own making,
Or else my wings will not fly and I will be destroyed.

Be patient, Chrysalis,
every butterfly must be enslaved in order to be set free.
Otherwise, you are simply a worm in a fancy coffin.

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