The Uncarved Blog

Transformed
(my first haiku)

Caterpillars spin
increments of commitment;
Butterflies fly free!

© Ken Chawkin

Published in The Dryland Fish, An Anthology of Contemporary Iowa Poets, 2003, within 13 Ways to Write Haiku: A Poet’s Dozen.

Also in this later post: Japanese culture: poetic aesthetics, artistry, and martial arts, inspired me to write haiku and tanka.

Written around 25 years later, In the Parkview Cave, seems relevant here.

For those interested in this transformation see these videos:

PBS 1974 doc (58:47): The Incredible Story of the Monarch Butterfly.

Apr 21, 2025, 60 Minutes (12:51): Inside the monarch butterfly migration mystery: flying to Mexico from Canada, the U.S. Monarchs traveled to a remote part of Mexico, a journey they’ve made for thousands of years, and wintered there. Now tens of millions of the butterflies are on an epic aerial journey back north.

Dec 15, 2024, Infinity Movies (32:08): Life Of Monarch Butterfly | Short Documentary | Flight Of The Monarch Butterfly Movie. Follow the amazing journey of the Monarch Butterfly as it takes it’s yearly migration from Canada to Mexico. Watch the females deposit eggs for the next generation as no single butterfly makes the entire round trip as they only live 2 – 8 weeks.

Oct 21, 2024, TED (11:24): The Magical, Mesmerizing Migration of Monarch Butterflies | Jaime Rojo | TED. When monarch butterflies migrate, they produce one of the most iconic wildlife spectacles in the world — and provide us with an important indicator of ecological health, says photographer Jaime Rojo. Telling a story about our relationship to the natural world, he shares his experience photographing these mesmerizing insects deep in their remote mountain habitats in Mexico, diving into the latest research into the mysteries of their multi-thousand-mile journey and sharing how each of us can join the growing movement to protect them. (Recorded at TED2024 on April 19, 2024)

Tags: haiku, transformation

This entry was posted on September 2, 2009 at 8:43 pm and is filed under My poems, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.