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by Judith Goldhaber
"A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas."
—Meteorologist Edward Lorenz
i.
O yes, I've seen the headlines, heard the news:
NURSING INFANT SWEPT FROM MOTHER'S ARMS
NEAR AMARILLO TEXAS! Homes and farms
reduced to rubble, backyard barbecues
upended in the Baptist chapel's pews—
And, yes, I've heard the rumors and alarms
spread by the gang of pundits and schoolmarms,
strident voices clamoring "J'accuse!"
Accuse? Who? Me? A black-and-orange butterfly,
genus Danaus, species plexippus,
inhabiting the green and mountainous
rain forests of Brazil...I wonder why
fate chose me for this monstrous kind of fame:
Those talking monkeys need someone to blame.
ii.
Those talking monkeys need someone to blame
for earthquakes, war, tornadoes, fire and flood,
and though the planet's swimming in the blood
of species that once flourished but became
extinct—ravaged and plundered in the name
of human progress, pinched off in the bud—
they have the insolence to fling their mud
at humble moths and butterflies! For shame!
My version of events needs be told:
I’ll skip the egg and caterpillar days
of childhood (since I find it never pays
to bore one's friends with memories so old)
and start my story with the fragile cage
that held my nascent life: the pupal stage.
iii.
My nascent being, in that pupal stage,
took its instructions from an inborn text
that boldly prompted me to vivisect
the chubby grub inside me to assuage
my body's need for energy. That rage
to live—a potent force in mankind and insect—
produced a paradoxical effect:
my size diminished with increasing age
until one day I rested and reviewed
my body parts. They'd undergone a change
into organs wholly new and strange:
thorax, proboscis, compound eyes, and crude
spiracles for breathing. And then there were these things
stuck firmly to my back, and crumpled: wings.
iv.
The crumpled wings protruding from my back
took too much space, and made it hard to turn
within that narrow cage. I had to learn
to move with caution, lest the flimsy sac
burst open prematurely. Through a crack
(which towards the final days of my sojourn
shredded the silk) one compound eye could just discern
light and some movement on the jungle track
beneath the spreading oiticica tree
from which the pupa swung. The heady scent
of climbing orchids filled the airy tentv
formed by the overhanging canopy.
It's now or never! something said to me—
my brand-new heart exploded: I was free!
v.
My heart exploded and I dangled free—
legs wildly groping for a twig or vine
to grasp, proboscis sniffing for a sign
of others in this jungle just like mev
with whom I might begin a family.
All the new organs seemed to work just fine
except for those ridiculous opaline
appendages still crumpled uselessly
behind my back. What are they for? No doubt
they had a purpose, but it wasn't clear—
heavy and wet they drooped down in the rear—
hardly a thing you'd want to wave about.
From where I clung, suspended upside down,
it seemed the earth was blue, the sky was brown.
vi.
With earth above and, far below me, blue,
I clung for hours, trying to decide
which way to go, alone and terrified.
A larva would have known just what to do—
worms always seek a hole to crawl into,
and dark earth offers lots of room to hide;
but something in my reborn self defied
that timid voice, and dreamed of something new.
By now the sticky laminate, the glue
that coated the appendages had dried;
my body now felt stiff and calcified
but somehow more assured than hitherto.
The sun rose through the treetops; time went by,
I spread my wings and fell into the sky.
vii.
I spread my wings and fell into the sky,
beating those wings and rising towards the sun
in ecstasy. It's true, I am the one
who did this thing, and I cannot deny
I gave no thought to who might live or die.
To tell the truth, when all is said and done
I'd do it all again, and yield to none
my right to live my life as butterfly.
So, mea culpa! Guilty after all!
"I am become death, destroyer of the world,"
said Oppenheimer, as the dark cloud swirled
above the swiftly rising fireball
at Alamogordo, when he lit the fuse:
you've seen the headlines and you've heard the news.
Copyright 2005 by Judith Goldhaber. This poem won the $500 grand prize in the 2005 "In the Beginning Was the Word" Literary Arts Contest, the international contest for individual poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction sponsored by the Lake Oswego United Church of Christ (Congregational, Oregon).
About Judith Goldhaber
Judith Goldhaber is a poet, playwright, science writer, and journalist. As a poet, she has been hopelessly addicted to the sonnet since the age of 14. Her poems have appeared in the National Poetry Review, Astropoetica, The Garfield Lake Review, the Literary Review, and Byline. She won the National Poetry Review's Annie Finch Prize, the National Poetry Association's "Songs Judged as Poetry" contest, and (in two consecutive years) the "In the Beginning Was the Word" Literary Arts Contest. She placed second in the Comstock Review's Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Competition and was a finalist in the Winning Writers War Poetry Contest, the Abbie M. Copps Poetry Competition, the National Writers Union Local 7 Poetry Contest, the Margaret
Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse, the Dana Awards in Poetry, the New Millennium Writings competition, the Dream Horse Press chapbook competition, and the Autumn House Press chapbook competition.
As a journalist specializing in physics and astronomy, Ms. Goldhaber has published over 1,000 articles. As a playwright, she has written the book and lyrics for two musicals based on the lives of great individuals in modern science, focusing on their humanity and little known aspects of their lives. Her musical about Stephen Hawking, "Falling Through a Hole in the Air", received a $5,000 grant from Paul Newman's "Newman's Own" Foundation, and was produced a few years ago by San Francisco City College. Her new musical (about Einstein's "lost" daughter Lieserl) will be workshopped in New York next year. A collection of 100 poems, Sonnets from Aesop, with illustrations by Gerson Goldhaber, was published in 2005 by Ribbonweed Press, and a second book-length manuscript, The Garden Spider, is looking for a publisher. She also juggles a husband and two daughters. She lives in Berkeley, California. Her email address is judithg70@hotmail.com.
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