could use more seraphs.
Anything with wings, really-
a falcon, a swallowtail.
Ravenous for marvels, I slit open
a chrysalis. Inside,
no caterpillar mid-morph.
Only its ghost in a horror of cells.
I pinch the luminous mash
of imaginal discs
and shudder, imagining
the mechanics of disintegration.
The wormy larva-whole,
then whorled. A wonder
it did not die. Even now,
smeared against my skin, it beams

like the angel in the tomb
prepared to proclaim a rising.

About This Poem
"I've lately turned to the natural world for instructions on how to survive, and the mystery of the chrysalis tells us that to transform into a new being, the larva must first submit to a period akin to death. This should alarm me, but instead, it gives me much-needed hope that our individual and collective seasons of pain and death will ultimately lead to seasons of resurrection and glory."
-Eugenia Leigh

About Eugenia Leigh
Eugenia Leigh is the author of "Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows" (Four Way Books, 2014). She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2017 Eugenia Leigh. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate