The uncommon, common Buckeye butterfly

Years past
it would be long
gone by now, southbound
for the winter

yet here it is basking
in this preternatural
heat mere days ahead
of snow, an odd mix

of blending in
and standing out,

wing panes layered
with some six hundred chitin
scales per square millimeter
in lush colors owed to pigments
and sculptural light-play,
tiny tiles of protein overlapped
in cryptic patterns
that allow it to disappear
in plain sight against
a backdrop of dried
pine needles, grasses
and leaves

despite these eight
outrageous, sightless eyespots
—marbled black and yellow, iridescent blue
and lilac— glaring, daring, silently
shouting for attention, high art
by any definition

and special, not as in
out of the ordinary or
beyond the expected, but
as in the Latin specialis—

embodying the traits of
a particular kind
of organism

—in which case they are
both ordinary and extraordinary,
expected and remarkable,
common on earth, decidedly
rare elsewhere

L. Allmann