Metamorphosis
A Collage Poem
I. Abstract Bejeweled Butterfly
After a watercolor, a retro background of abstract elements by Love
Tano appearing in a Rumi calendar (August 2025)
After rotating my view 180 degrees, a cocoon of paper gives birth to a swallowtail, whose tail has been swallowed by the edges of an easel. Its reticulation and maze of chitinous membranes and veins are replaced with an architecture of steel with layers of rouge, peach, melon and light coral pinks, a repertoire of blue and green shades, trimmed in black, accented with white. This butterfly is flying over a maroon sea, carrying the souls of my brothers, my sisters.
II. Flight of Butterflies Trapped in the Heart
A Golden Shovel
I’ve been short on courage, but I have a heart
of sunlight, straight from the king’s hand.
~ Rumi
I stare into the abstract space of a universe where I’ve been
struggling to make sense of a swallowtail poised on a short
limb of a pawpaw tree hosting its caterpillar, and on courage,
which tomorrow might bring. It has genetic faith, but I have
questions that are not satisfied with rhetoric; I have a heart
of a fool not knowing my destiny in this late season of sunlight,
not like a butterfly powering its wings by the Sun straight from
the creator of all. Yet it is me, not the butterfly, that has the king’s
favor. The butterfly is lifted by the wind, but I am by his hand.
III. A Psalm of Stars that Fly Like Prayers
After listening to the music of Sufi Roni, “In Search for God”
Like the deer that pants for water, my soul desires thee.
I feel the music, the whisper of you, that small still voice
that haunts this woodwind, this duduk, that moans
for me and in harmony with the ney—an end blown
flute fashioned from a cane—also cries for me. Do you
hear? For I do not have the words that do not grate
the soul. Let strums of the oud, and saz, and setar chase
after the light of stars. Do you hear the beats of my heart?
It is a daf—a frame drum rattling with the soft chime
of attached timbrels, like prayers grasping at beyond
the stars. Change my heart. Let me fly to you, O Lord.
___________________________________________________________________
The epigraph is from a larger poem called “Your laughter turns the world to paradise”
John C. Mannone’s Christian-infused work appears in Windhover, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Artemis, Windward Review, and others. Awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature, his five full-length collections include the Weatherford Award-nominated Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023) and the Tennessee Book Award 2025 finalist, Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024). He’s a retired professor of physics living in East Tennessee.
Amethyst Review 
This was so fun to read and explore, John!
LikeLike