Nature's Revelations:
God Speaks Through Beauty
Poetry by Gill Schwartz


STAGES IN AWAKENING
(For a Butterfly)

The Rites of Transformation
call for the passing away
of what was to make place
for what is to be.

What is death and decay
to the caterpillar,
is a nurturing womb
for the butterfly.

 

THE EGG
(A SPORE-SEED OF POSSIBILITY)

I am a tiny sea of aliveness
longing to take form.
In ritual gathering,
I formulate the strands of
possibilities bequeathed me
to become a creature being.

 

THE CATERPILLAR
(A WORM'S LIFE)

I've distended into a creepy crawly.
Rows of legs roll me in a wave,
one butt to the other.
Nothing much of interest
but what to chew
and where to burrow.
Simply a gathering life,
and it seems to please.

 

THE CHRYSALIS
(PURGATORY)

I put myself here,
wove the cocoon that
petrified into my crypt.
And I die from the same
secretions that served me
so well in my life as a worm.
Now they engulf and dissolve
every shred of my being. Again,
I'm back into an amorphous gel.

 

THE BUTTERFLY
(ILLUMINATION)

Emerged from that tomb turned womb,
its still me! That deathing did not destroy
this wisp of Consciousness. And, bliss supreme,
my soul's imaginings are fulfilled,
I now have wings splendidly unfurled,
arrayed in purple, wine and gold.
This guise fulfills those longings
that enticed me as a seed-being.
I am awake and wondrously reborn.

Illustration by Robin Morini

 

(Also see illustrations In ART GALLERY)