The cabbage butterfly

White wings skitter across my peripheral vision.

I am sitting at my desk at the window staring at a screen trying trying trying to let go and follow what I believe is my path.
Outside lies: a concrete patio, a planter full of soil and herbs and veggies, a pool, a strip of sand, the bay. To either side of me: buildings and streets and fake grass. In back of me: the asphalt streets of Pacific Beach span and cross and tempt Bud Light drunks to careen off speed ditches and wobble through intersections.

A winged body aerially circumambulates a Walking Stick Kale. She dips and flutters, landing for a split second on pale green leaves. She leaves tiny yellow beads which are actually eggs which will become tiny green worms. Worms! Worms that eat my kale and need to be squished! I don't want her on my greens but she is outside, I am inside, and I just watch her energetic dance.

Eureka, she says!

This little butterfly found my kale among all the concrete and sand and water and Bud Light cans. I haven't seen any other kale for miles around. (except for at trader joes but considering it is all chopped up and in a plastic bag I doubt that little butterfly would recognize it. I barely do.)
So how did she find her kale?
Was it a long journey fraught with wrong turns and mistaken landings?
Did she have to compete with other butterflies who tried to throw her off the trail?
Did it take her whole lifespan to find my solitary kale plant among the seaweed strewn beach towns and this action is done in her last dying gasp?

Or was it simple and effortless? She had no idea where she was going but she knew she'd get there. Her body knew where to go even if she couldn't see those broad pale green leaves from so far away. She trusted, if butterflies possess such a thing as distrust to make trust a truth for them, that she would find what she was looking for. And she did.

Here I am still "working on" that whole letting go/not trying/just being/landing exactly where I need to thing. I am envious of that butterfly's faith.
Yet when the words spill out on a page and I am not thinking of what will populate the next line anymore and my hands fly across the keyboard as if they are someone else's, I think I get it and I thank that little creature for the reminder.

I even promise not to squish those worms she flew to this food desert to hatch.
There's enough kale for all of us. For now at least.