My children downstairs thrill with news
of hanging caterpillars,
scream up to me,
“Come look!
Another one is in its chrysalis!”
I ignore them. I’m after bigger game.
The fog strays into the valley,
wraps gray gauze around tall Monterey pine,
cypress, scrub hills.
I wait to see what will emerge.
Today, the newspaper claims
the universe has a top and a bottom
as this ultimate place
prepares to squeeze back into a ball,
roll itself toward some infinite split,
come crashing out as an Einstein butterfly,
doing loopty loops beyond the boundary
of our glass jar.
Even my children have sprouted
into their shining bodies.
They discard their old skins somewhere,
or swallow them whole
so I can’t worship what they were.
Then, as everything flames to change,
I walk downstairs to see one caterpillar
fixing itself in a pea pod, a space suit, a scabbard,
hanging by the thinnest filament of time.