Blue Butterfly
“The sky and the earth are my coffin, and the sun, moon, and stars are my burial gifts”
Zhuangzi once said.
I envied him.
I envied the silkworm
that sheds its stiff cocoon of flesh
to become a butterfly of the soul.
I envied Kübler-Ross,★
who cared for dying children,
carrying a plush caterpillar that, when flipped,
transformed into a butterfly,
a small miracle for her young patients.
But what moved me even more
was the final moment of her own funeral—
her children opening a small box before the coffin,
releasing butterflies into the air.
And when the mourners opened their envelopes,
blue butterflies fluttered out,
rising toward the sky.
What are we to do with such beauty?
★ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Swiss-born psychiatrist and world-renowned authority on thanatology (the study of death and dying).
The Fireflies’ Shawshank Redemption*
Lights out, I slip into bed.
At dawn, craving a sip of water,
I find fireflies with blue-lit eyes drifting through the kitchen—
as if I’ve stepped into a forest of green moss and clear, rising springs.
Smartphone fireflies, kimchi-fridge fireflies,
vacuum cleaner fireflies, water purifier fireflies, boiler fireflies—
different in name, yet glowing in chorus.
On the wall, Van Gogh’s Starry Night burns bright;
Cypresses surge skyward, waves ripple and swell.
How I long to be shocked awake by that celestial light,
to be stunned by that radiant realm
where stories in our eyes bloom against the void.
Every cord trails like a tail, plugged into pig-nose sockets,
each one shining—
Into which socket must I fit
my shrunken tailbone, relic of our decline,
to blaze, round and full, like a ten-month sun?
Would blue fireflies flicker through my body then?
Would the Ganges of millennia within me
spill into a galaxy of blue stars?
Would the fireflies, imprisoned in my flesh,
ride a hundred thousand volts and cry,
“This is the moment!”—breaking free?
Ah, the tender mountain breeze—
Shawshank Redemption!
Lonely happiness, freedom—
I must have yearned to fasten myself to that eternity.
* Shawshank Redemption: Frank Darabont’s 1994 film, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, a story of an unquenchable longing for freedom.
Poet Ms. Im Sol Nae
Poet Ms. Im Sol Nae received the Newcomer Award from the monthly literary magazine Jayu Munhak in 1999. Her poetry collections include The QR Code of a Leaf, Amazon, That Transit Station, The Cry of an Awakened Amazon, Hong Nyeo, and many others. She has also received numerous literary honors, including the Yeongnang Poetry Award, the Korean Literary Critics Association Award, the Korean Lyric Poetry Award, selection as a Sejong Excellent Book, the Poet’s Poet Award, and the Buddhist Literary Writers’ Award.
She is the 6th President of the Korean Association of World Literature.
