
Red Spotted Purple Necklace
The Red Spotted Purple fore wing has an amazing array of iridescent colors. Blue-green against coal black with large orange spots. Orange and white dashes in the margin. The Red-Spotted Purple mimics the Pipevine Swallowtails, thus gaining protection from birds.
pendant - appoximately 1 1/2"
adjustable black cord
May Swenson mentions it in her poem Unconscious Came A Beauty:
Unconscious U
came a beauty to my n
wrist c
and stopped my pencil, o
merged its shadow profile with n
my hand's ghost s
on the page: c
Red Spotted Purple or else Mourning i
Cloak, o
paired thin-as-paper wings, near black, u
were edged on the seam side poppy orange, s
as were its spots.
C a m e a B e a u t y
I sat arrested, for its soot-haired
body's worm
shone in the sun.
It bent its tongue long as
a leg
black on my skin
and clung without my
feeling,
while its tomb-stained
duplicate parts of
a window opened.
And then I
moved.