Friday, February 01, 2019

The Cabbage Butterfly

'Poem for the week' -- "The Cabbage Butterfly":

The human brain wants to complete—

The poem too easy? Bored. The poem too hard?
Angry. What’s this one about? Around the block
the easy summer weather, the picture-puff clouds
adrift in the blue sky that’s no paint-by-numbers.

In the corner garden, the cabbage butterfly
bothers the big leafy heads, trying to complete
its life cycle by hatching a horned monster to
chew holes in the green cloth manufactured so
laboriously by seed germ from air, water,
light, dirt. There’s no end to this, yes, no end.

Even when we want to stop, stop, stop! Even
when someone else calls us monster. Even when
we fear and hope that we will not have the final
word.

-- Minnie Bruce Pratt

While not consistent with this time of year, this poem touches the essence of many vectors of my experience this week.

And then, Tami graced me with these three words, “I trust you”, obliterating my sense of the accumulating monster within me.  How much do we all long to hear those words?