The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2005

A Butterfly’s Warning to the Newly Eclosed

Birds, spiders, robber- and dragonflies, ambush and assassin bugs, lizards, and many other small predators catch and consume butterflies whenever they have the opportunity.

Robert Michael Pyle,

The Audubon Society Handbook

for Butterfly Watchers

I sometimes wonder, while I’m basking, why the Egg Maker

made birds. I could almost envision the sky as a great, free place,

if it weren’t for their heaviness and their terrifying aim.

A bird will come down at you like a thrown rock,

grasp you in its claws, and tear you

with its stone-arrow beak. It will grind you,

body and wing, until it’s turned you to paste.

Terrible creatures.

I believe heaven is a sky without birds.

Take my advice: Look upward, but not only upward.

Net makers among the side branches are fishing the air.

While you’re bracing for sudden flashes overhead,

their filaments will snare you. Before you know it,

their webs will have shrunk the world

to the size of your body. Outside is everything else,

remorseless, as you now see, and uninterested in

you. I would rather birds than a slow dying

of glimpsed light and green shimmer,

all the while helpless to move

and drying like an old leaf.

Always watch. Flick your wings,

use your eyespots to confuse them.

Trust no one.

Charlotte Muse