Chrysalis Poem by Patti Masterman

And so all of her words began to go inside again,
A few at a time; slow flowing, as a half frozen stream moves
Only because it has become partially thawed,
And all the things which had happened began to reverse;
She felt a gradual implosion starting inside, like a reversal of energy
Almost as if her heart had opened up and was attempting
To swallow the outer being; to carry it away to safety,
To where no men are, or had ever been, or could ever go;
And also where no men could understand, where it was that she might be going.

Almost as though she were making a discovery none had made before,
As if the brain were suddenly relying on some inner resource
Never before suspected; without knowledge it could be there inside.
And she came awake slowly, within the solitude of herself
And opened her eyes after a time, in the blank darkness:
The whole world became quiet then, seeming to hold it's breath,
As if watching something rare about to unfold
And she began to disappear entirely, from inside herself first
Like a snake that had eaten its own tail, forming a careless circle
Swallowing itself whole, if you will, till all that was left outside
Was the head; and with a slight twist; it too disappeared,
All of it gone into a beauty that was not visible, not comprehensible.

Anyone else who has never seen their own mirrored insides,
Would have great difficulty in visualizing
The serpentine self, crisscrossing through the psyches chambers
Like an impossible tapestry that is self woven, with only the most sacred
Of treasured and secret threads, of the inner recesses of a person;
Through minute hooks and needles, with never a sound made.

And afterwards, in the new form, she never looked back again,
In many ways not the same being as before, though unaware
In the exact way a child is unaware, that he is changing in subtle ways,
Day by day. In time, even her name went forgotten, as though written
In a book of things never recorded; or whose key got thrown away
During a sad stay somewhere, that went on too long,
And too many precious, fragile things had been broken,
Just by the mere act of breathing, and of inhabiting the solitude of a body.

And all her loneliness had became just a signpost, on a different road
Left behind, only that others might see and follow;
For that she had now become her own courseway,
Her own least resistance, her own permanence
And her own abiding presence, in this happenstance of a world.
She forgivingly meted out her flesh and bones, to the restless world outside
An appealing sliver at a time, and they didn't hesitate to imbibe;
As she had hidden herself in the midst of their words,
The ones which dwelt in the less traveled, fractured places, deep under earth.

And if you looked carefully, at the disappearing edge of daybreak
Or the trailing mists of nightfall's chill, or in the rainstorm's unpredictable slant,
Or the blizzard's close mirages; and at the side of a half-rainbow's towering bands
You might catch a glimpse of her cape, woven only of the mutable winds,
And her eyes which were of an alien crystal, and changed color
With each season and weather; and therein was a gaze,
Contained everything ever present in this universe
From the first conception of time, and nothing at all which was identifiable,
Definable, measurable, or containable; all the qualities which had always
Made her worry for her sanity; and wonder whether she would lose her reason.

And it all left behind a faint aroma, like otherworldly strains of music,
Which must be absorbed through senses other than the ones
Commonly used down here; or like otherworldly beauty might feel
If you could press it against your skin, or as though
You might take a snapshot of a definite feeling.
And occasionally, she would take someone back there with her,
To that other dimension; not because she was ever lonely anymore,
But only because they had asked, to join her in her travels

To the some other place, that is found nowhere outside
And the something that is never known by senses,
At the edge of the beckoning forever, where dreams can finally flourish
To touch there the downy face of possibility, and come forward bravely
Into the future, which is more than just a fantasy
Always about to vanish, just before dawn's awakening:
And she never said no, not even once, to a single one who asked,
And they said that she seemed intrigued,
With the gossamer glow, of her bright wings.

(written to Ludovico Einaudi - Divenire)