Usually known as Red Admiral
though called by some (like Nabokov)
Red Admirable, by others The Alderman.
In Latin, Vanessa atalanta, for the goddess
famed among the Greeks for her fleetness.
Vermilion bands across panther-black wings
milk-spots spilled over their squared-off tips
little blue stud at the tail. Flies all over
the northern world-I've even seen it in Iceland.
The caterpillars feed on nettles.
That's basically it. But what the field guide
won't tell you-let alone any poxy app-
is how a boy of ten painted it in tempera
for a fifth-grade mural, working from an Audubon
sticker. How he asked Mrs. Frost if it was real,
because how, really, could it be? How she said
"Yes, Bobby, it is. Maybe you'll see one someday."
Then how there, how very there it was
in a barnyard that summer, basking fully spread
at the foot of a Colorado cottonwood. How Atalanta
rose and fell, rose and fell at the end of the day,
playing with Painted Ladies, the lot of them swirling
up to the crown, down to the ground, up again
and all around, so fast, right into dusk.
And how she appeared on the butterfly bush
yesterday morning, Atalanta herself,
fresh as could be and glistening, all scarlet and jet.
Then a Painted Lady too (Cynthia of the Thistles
in old books). The two of them rose again,
reunited, bearing me back on brilliant wings. Back
to that classroom, that barnyard, that cottonwood,
sixty-six years ago.
This poem will appear in the book Swimming with
Snakes: Encounters in the Actual World (Poetry and Prose), by Robert Michael Pyle, to be published in spring 2025 by Watershed Press, Seattle.
G'num2024vol25No4
Robert Michael Pyle
Founding Member, Noted Lepidopterist, Founder of the Xerces Society, Author of more than 20 books