Reflections on Holometaboly

Kristen Dachler Kapfer

What is left once the old structures
larval even so, dissolve?

A hyaline, more-or-less gel
with lucence without crystallinity
it is radical, plasmic, all potential. 
Dedifferentiation is complete.

And what of the luster of chrysalides
that iridesce?

The stage changes inside this subtle skin
which refracts, in many layers, light 
like the scales of fish, clear and quick.

It may seem there is nothing to show
but the pupal cuticle’s reciprocal colors, an act of waves
bending and connecting in thin planes. 
This structural color coating bounding integral destruction
is instarred for a while, set now in small places.

Neither quite amorphous nor exposed, that is,
and equally unindolent, it is working.
Expression is already at hand.
Old cells are replaced or regain developmental potency,
gradual changes in structure creating 
the imaginal.

The Science

This poem is inspired by research on the plasmic stage of complete metamorphosis and the iridescent, structural colours of butterflies and some of their pupal cases. In contrast to pigmentary colour, which is caused by molecules that selectively absorb certain colours of light, structural colour is produced by the interference of the light waves as they interact with nanoscale particles or structures—for example, light can partially reflect off the surface of a chrysalis, the rest refracting, passing into the thin sheath, and reflecting there, bouncing back out and combining in new and colourful ways with the other light waves.

As for the holometabolous process of complete metamorphosis, in which the early life stages are very different from the mature stage, I see connections to the creative mess of art and writing and wished to find the beauty in the unfinished phases, full of potential, to help tolerate their ambiguity and the time they take. The poem is meant to be read slowly.

The Poet

Kristen Dachler Kapfer is a bilingual and culturally hybrid Swiss-American and has spent years of her life in both countries. She recently moved to Berlin, Germany. She is multipassionate, her academic studies interdisciplinary, and her poetry often ambiguous, all of which may or may not spring from bicultural experience. Her poem ‘Middlemost’ was published in Spillway Magazine. ‘Black Ice, or Crazings’, a prose poem and also a passage from her novel in progress, can be found online at pifmagazine.com.

Next poem: Roses are red, and so is Clathrus archeri by Gloria D. Gonsalves