CHRYSALIS

The question you pose:
how I compose my party pieces
and pen my paltry poems, salty tales or plain-writ lines.
So close your eyes, my precious,
fluff the cushions, recline, open ears and mind,
and visualise.

Imagine, if you will, a scattered clump
of plump industrious caterpillars hump-stumping
through the ganglionic cortical maze,
nose-nudging a reluctant neurone here,
sparking a sluggish synapse there;
a herd of diligent neurotransmitters
winkling out wedges of memory, slivers of speech
and great drifts of discussion and debate.
You can trace their silken tracks with ease,
estimate their direction, describe the lucid structure
of every unremarkable linguistic task.

Imagine further, as you must,
a sudden interruption to this cosy round
which sends one such sorry caterpillar all of scurry
to find a comfy corner, spin a silvered net
to catch itself, attach itself and palpitate alone.
Look carefully and you’ll remark
an unexpected hardening of soft skin
turned architectural, translucent, crystalline.
Within you see – in glimpses – the roiling
moil of mixed and molten images
a semiotic stew of private symbols, public signs
and, every now and then, a word or two you understand.
If you’re very careful, and you bide your time,
you may slip inside a simile or two
or mix a metaphor within the brew.
And all this time the exoskeleton takes the strain,
tectonic distortions on a micro scale,
and shows some semblance of the life within
and, more important, of the life to be.

The shifting drifting reconstructions rumble on
until a sudden seismic shudder shakes the case,
a crack appears, gapes and gives release
to green full-grown imago, wet and trembling
on the very verge of flight.

In the sunlight, wings full spread,
the butterfly takes the air:
and I can pin and pen
the fulgent new-born words
upon the pristine page.

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Cover picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7911705@N07/2232593607/