Ramblingwoods.com has a Nature Notes meme that challenges us to find something interesting in nature and post about our impressions. Click on the link above or on the badge to the side of this post to find what other nature lovers have seen and written about this week. I found my small contribution to the meme pinching parsley in my garden. It's a late-stage caterpillar form of Papilio polyxenes asterius. I resisted the temptation to pinch it back. Hey, I love my parsley, and it's taking more than its fair share! I know that I should be more hospitable to something with a name like polyxenes (meaning "very foreign"). And I will be. It will soon change into something quite beautiful, quite powerful, quite majestic. It has a built-in, fool-proof capacity for change--and wings to fly.
"My Cocoon tightens--Colors teaze--
I'm feeling for the Air
A dim capacity for Wings
Demeans the Dress I wear--
A power of Butterfly must be--
The Aptitude to fly
Meadows of Majesty implies
And easy Sweeps of Sky--
So I must baffle at the Hint
And cipher at the Sign
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clue divine--
--a poem by Emily Dickinson, c. 1866--
