“The mysteries of mimicry had a special attraction for me. Its phenomena showed an artistic perfection usually associated with man-wrought things.”

I read it again
as if it were dusted with scales,
as if I had antennae.

“What wants to land even briefly
in the page-glade opened
by Nabokov’s net?”

Limenitis arthemis astyanax,
the Red-Spotted Purple —
that southern mimic,
dark-winged as the Pipevine Swallowtail,
wearing someone else’s warning —
a bluff of venom
in the submargins.

And its sibling form,
the White Admiral of the north —
band of frost
like a wound
or a flag.

A butterfly doubled
by geography, inheritance,
hybridized —
a living negotiation
between what warns
and what dazzles,
what survives
and what stuns.

You say,
“I’ve never seen,
as far as I know,
that northern form.”

Which means
it may have passed you once,
unclaimed —
or perhaps
it still waits for you.