Zhou's Butterfly Speaks

[DaisyNinjaGirl]

We need to pin
This idea down.
(Do you mean the humble monarch,
or the Giant Atlas Moth?)
Maybe I'm little pepetuna, tucked
For years inside a puriri tree
Until I fly - for one night only! - in the warm dark
Bigger than your hand.

What am I? Am I
The down of thistles, milkweed, swan plant fluff?
Green pods popping open as they dry, their internal
Lattices transforming into food for me?

My tiny eggs, lined up like microbeads;
My caterpillars food for others, for birds, for wasps
That flutter and fly; do they dream, too?

How extraordinary to dream myself a man,
Or more, a woman, who holds the universe inside her
Just like I do.

The Master says there is a great fish Kun
Surging from water, no one knows its size;
It changes - poof - to a bird whose beating wings
Hide the sky.

Wow, that's really big.

***

aka "Daisy Does the Dao"...

[TRavine]

Daisy, this is beautiful!

You have such a gift with words. It's incredibly imaginative and I feel there is a lot to be read between the lines. Thank you for sharing this.

[DaisyNinjaGirl]

Thank you Tom!

This is a pepe-tuna (puriri moth) if you're interested. We have this wonderful book about a moth egg hatching the same night a baby is born, and showing the different stages of the boy growing up while little pepe-tuna is still inside the tree... eating. Finally, on their fifth birthday, pepetuna comes out of the tree, for just one night.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/music/12619/pe ... uriri-moth
https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/pepetuna-9780143504962

[merry]

That is an amazing and beautiful poem.

The Master says there is a great fish Kun
Surging from water, no one knows its size;
It changes - poof - to a bird whose beating wings
Hide the sky.

It's not just the words that are there to be read, but the feelings and images it provokes that make it so vast. What a wonderful gift to be able to write like this.

[DaisyNinjaGirl]

Thank you, Merry!

The Master says there is a great fish Kun

I actually stole this image straight out of the opening of the Zhuangzi

[mimosa]

Wow, Daisy!

That is super amazing! Very, very nice.

ME

[DaisyNinjaGirl]

Thanks, Mimosa!