Papilio multicaudata – the two-tailed swallowtail

I’m picking up where I left off last week–that is, with another persona poem. In this case it’s a butterfly, papilio multicaudata or the two-tailed swallowtail, that gets to speak.

When we lived in California, we saw this common swallowtail all over. It’s Arizona’s state butterfly. But it’s a western North American butterfly. In NE Ohio, we see instead its also very common cousin, papilio glaucus, the eastern tiger swallowtail, which has a single tail on each wing instead of two.

What’s in a name? Perhaps nothing, according to Shakespeare. After all, he says “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” — but maybe that was just a philosophy that conveniently fit the plot of “Romeo & Juliet.”

When you have a very serious name, do you act more reserved? When your name is somehow silly or ironic, do you become the class clown? What if your last name is Banks, and you go into finance & banking? Or if your last name is Hacker, and your profession is cybersecurity?  Hard to believe?

Actually there is a word that describes when a person’s name and occupation are amusingly or ironically linked: aptronym. The opposite — e.g. a person named Crook who is in law enforcement — is an inaptronym (same link as above). People collect examples of such phenomena, and papers have been written, but I don’t think there’s enough data to suggest any causality between name and occupation. At least, not statistically.

What about the animal and plant kingdoms, all those species saddled with long scientific names?

Glaucus comes from the Latin for gray, which seems odd for a yellow, striped butterfly. But the female of papilio glaucus can be striped yellow, or can be almost all black.  It’s dimorphic within the females, meaning they can have one of two distinct forms. But that’s biology, I must be digressing…

Papilio is Latin for butterfly, and cauda means tail. So Papilio multicaudata just means multi-tailed butterfly. Not very fancy in English.  So maybe the butterfly prefers its Latin name? Perhaps it has an intellectual approach to it’s environment, to people and plants and what it wants from life. Something self-aware, like its formal name. Perhaps while it stops to smell the roses–er, lilacs–it would enlighten whomever is around to hear it.

Papilio multicaudata

I could say you’ve presupposed an inactuality
but then who would I be speaking to?

Rather clarify: I like what you’ve done there,
making those words eventually mean nothing
and asserting that was always so.

Let the buggers cocooned speak
only to other buggers cocooned.
If they desire.

Freedom from wrappings
allows communion

with groundlings, angels, queens,
while belonging to none.

Content to rest momentarily
on this un-pruned lilac.

To explicate: my wings fly as far and fast as I want to fly.

If you enjoyed Papilio multicaudata

You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.  Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.

Have a great week!