October 11, 2011

old and new

We have such awe for the caterpillar. Reverence, even,
for its slow molting, for the poetry of its transformation. We watch, transfixed,
as it wrestles out of what was – that permeable, earthbound skin –
and catches the first whiff of flight. It’s not that the metaphor is lost
on us. We recognize the magnificence and rigor of metamorphosis, the ache
and necessity of change. But the turn of our own body we thwart and battle.
Our hearts cleave from an outgrown home but we groove claw marks in our wake –
departure like a hostile beast. Perhaps it’s the fulcrum in the see-saw that alarms.
That pause between the past waving its farewell and the future opening its arms.