AustLit

Epigraph:

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,

Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Author's note:

The story goes that the esteemed scientist, Charles Darwin could not stand the butterfly. For by its vivid beauty, by its brilliant raiment and languid flight—in short, by its very existence—this small and subtle creature threatened the bedrock of his life’s work. Such is the nature of the small and beautiful, to slip past the snares of the mind and reveal the moment as it truly is—as a gift, as intervention.