Perspective Poem by Yen Cress

A lovely orange-and-black Gulf Fritillary
visits my garden,
looking for the passion vine
where she spent her youth.

Ah! There it is by the fence,
just as she seems to recall
from when she still had her spiky hairs,
before she got her glorious wings.

She stops just for a moment,
squeezes out a tiny egg,
and another,
and another,
and another,
each on its own five-fingered leaf,
as her mother had done.

Then she is gone.

The responsibilities of motherhood
have taken only a few moments
of her life.

But perhaps that's a very long time
in butterfly-years.