Day 12: Be Transformed Amidst the Daily

“Caterpillar”

by

Christina Rossetti

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk.

May no toad spy you,
May the little birds pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

*Adapted from Poet’s Original found in First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 1 

Christina Rossetti is one of my husband’s favorite poets and she is the poet of “Caterpillar”, the poem our son presented at his first poetry recital 6 years ago. It’s a poem about a caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly, a transformation that involves spinning and dying in order to live again.

When our son recites this poem the innocence-pure, the voice-boy-pitched, the child-like wonder, my blue-eyed, wide-eyed miracle that is him, I am enraptured-completely with him, by him and by the transforming nature of the lived experience of survivorship thus far.

Simply

Stephanie