The butterfly’s assumption-gown,
In chrysoprase apartments hung,
This afternoon put on.
How condescending to descend,
And be of buttercups the friend
In a New England town!
In six lines, this poem marvels at the beauty of something pretty mundane: a new butterfly among the buttercups. How do we know the butterfly is new? She’s wearing an assumption-gown, which is likely a reference to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven (per the Catholic church). This final robe of Mary would be a likely counterpart to the final “clothing” of a butterfly who has shed its chrysalis (chrysoprase, incidentally, is green, like that of a butterfly chrysalis). How beautiful, then, the final form of the butterfly; how absurdly normal a place for it to be, in the flowers in an ordinary town.
How can we find otherwordly beauty in the regular world around us?
Your challenge: clothe an ordinary object (living, breathing, or otherwise) in an extraordinary adornment. Kitten wearing mittens? Rock with a sock? Plush Darth Vader wearing a tiara? It’s up to you! Take a picture, write a poem, come up with a story idea, or just tell us what you’re imagining.
The Emily Project 