The Weight of Wings

We measure time by the ticking of clocks, but the earth measures it by the slow decay of leaves and the sudden, frantic pulse of a wing. There is a fragility that demands nothing from us. It does not ask to be understood. It does not ask to be saved. It simply exists in the space between one breath and the next, a brief interruption in the heavy stillness of the forest. We spend our lives building walls against the cold, forgetting that the most significant things are those that cannot be held. They arrive without warning and depart before we have found the words to name them. We are left only with the memory of a movement, a flicker of color against the grey, and the quiet realization that we were never meant to keep it. What remains when the movement stops?

Stefanie Laroussinie has captured this fleeting grace in her work titled Vanuatu Butterfly. Does the stillness of the image allow you to hear the silence of the island?