emergence

Listen, Humb Dillbilly, and hear it again!

Butterflies transform inside soft cocoons. Those leave the bug prone to impression during the change, but a library of imaginal disks retain a piece of his identity. He eats food his grandparents made him to pass the metamorphosis while listening to music on the radio when he was in high school and poems written when he was writing this.

Geckos grow in hard shells. They start fluid and emerge fully formed. The identity is untouched during the incubation, but an exploratory life spent underwater, on the forest floor, and in the sky shapes the lizard herself into a nest holding an egg. She spends her time behind a calcified veil dreaming of the world on the other side.

Sometimes Butterfly clams up and without external pressure remains a caterpillar. So he learns to love himself. Sometimes Spider wraps Gecko in a cocoon. She forgot to bring a journal, her tears wear her down, a piece of her is melting away! So she learns to pack like an arthropod, finding a suitcase and filling it with mountain goats and gyoza.

When I first saw my claws and tail I thought Mermaid was a family, but now I'm many mermaids. Gecko-Butterfly. Man-Woman, Irish-Japanese, Catholic-Jewish, Lansdale-North Wales, Atlantic-Appalachian, Sailor-Landlubber, Mason-Dixon, East Coast-West Coast, Florida Man-Reality, Philly-Universe.

I claimed the hedge isn't solid, but it might be covered in a film that wraps and enumerates each part of Dedalus as we push him through. The Sieve of Broken Homes might be a Magic Bubble Wand, Glove World might be a state of mind, what was a thread that cuts might be a tie that binds, and grandma maple's bending and branching might be casting shade.

The soapy film can make eyes water. Sometimes sobbing mermaids see the line in themselves and pull at the hook, sometimes other mermaids laugh and splash their tails, new lines emerging from cresting waves. Today I sat on the bank and dipped my tail in the river to feel closeness to the hardening force of the benthic zone, a shallow trickle to grow scales that can move water while the rest stays soft and fleshy.

I was casting out when pirates boarded and tried steering me into a whirlpool. The mad July sun said yes, and I whispered maybe! The wind raged through the warning bell, up the mast, down to an exit, pulling me out. The sight was clear, I held the sail until I was too then sent the scallywags down the plank for a chat with Poseidon. I hauled in and ate and cast and hauled and cast and rooted with the jellies. And when the fishing was done, and after my visit with the river maidens, the dogs and I set course for the setting sun singing songs of the weather, shellfish, and the sea.