Erkembode: Butterfly Vision series

On Discovering a Butterfly

 I found it and I named it, being versed
 in taxonomic Latin; thus became
 godfather to an insect and its first
 describer -- and I want no other fame.

 Wide open on its pin (though fast asleep),
 and safe from creeping relatives and rust,
 in the secluded stronghold where we keep
 type specimens it will transcend its dust.

 Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss,
 poems that take a thousand years to die
 but ape the immortality of this
 red label on a little butterfly.

-- Vladimir Nabokov


photography by Erkembode (David Kelly-Mancaux)
@erk_embode