Butterfly Soup

A little creepy caterpillar

Crawls free from its egg

It has no purpose in being

No great goal to accomplish

That will help save the world

From some danger or strife

The caterpillar eats

Leaf after leaf

Nothing on its mind but food

Food to make it grow

Food to make it big and fat

Food to give it strength to transform

A caterpillar knows that its current form

Is not its destiny. No indeed

For when it spins its chrysalis,

Green and concealing, there is

A change happening just out of sight

Inside its case, the caterpillar

Is gone, as if it never existed.

Its little crawly body has vanished

Disintegrated into little more than goop

But the imaginals

Waiting inside the caterpillar soup

Grow a new creature

The lovely butterfly!

My innocence has left me

From my childhood as I grow

Ever taller, ever wiser

Ever older, ever better

After a terrible trial

After the smoke clears

And ashes settle

I do not rise as a Phoenix

Alive again but exactly the same

I hatch as a caterpillar

From their long sleep

Inside the chrysalis

The pain is hard, the struggles

Unending and ever tough

I was born as a little green worm with feet

Devouring the good things around me

Growing in body, mind, heart, and soul

But it was the hardships I survived through,

Fires that left nothing but the potential

Those tiny imaginals that knew,

What I could be,

At my greatest and strongest,

That my beautiful new form came from

The old me has died.

Remembered but gone

For I am reborn, a child fully grown

With brilliant wings to soar

A caterpillar consumes

But a butterfly changes

The world around her

Causing flowers to become fruit

Inspiring others to create and make more

Of themselves and what they have

Giving beauty to a desolate world

That might have existed without them

The change is real

The change is permanent

But it is not to be lamented

For what was new is new again

Remade into a new being

That is ready to rattle the stars

With things only it can do