The Long A Was Weathered Wood (Vladimir Nabokov)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your fingers map the wing-scales like they're morse code,
each pattern a confession written in iridescence.
The net swings through the air—your body knows
the arc before your mind translates the motion,
your cerebellum timing every lunge and pause,
proprioceptive genius reading air itself.

[Chorus]
You've caught the impossible in mesh,
held metamorphosis still enough to name it,
turned the trembling into taxonomy,
made the fugitive speak back to you.
Your net swings through the world like it's a sentence,
and every creature in it becomes immortal.

[Verse 2]
Your synapses fire laterally across domains—
the lepidopteran's thorax and the lover's spine,
both wired the same beneath the skin.
Long-term potentiation burns those pathways deep:
the rarest specimen becomes unforgettable,
your cortex remapping with each new discovery,
detail stacking into detail like transparent wings.

[Chorus]
You've caught the impossible in mesh,
held metamorphosis still enough to name it,
turned the trembling into taxonomy,
made the fugitive speak back to you.
Your net swings through the world like it's a sentence,
and every creature in it becomes immortal.

[Bridge]
Your mirror neurons fire when you watch them flutter—
you become the blue, the orange, the fractal geometry.
The hippocampus timestamps every flight,
every color shift, each delicate antenna.
You hold the trembling thing and it holds you back,
both of you transformed by the meeting.

[Chorus]
You've caught the impossible in mesh,
held metamorphosis still enough to name it,
turned the trembling into taxonomy,
made the fugitive speak back to you.
Your net swings through the world like it's a sentence,
and every creature in it becomes immortal.

[Outro]
The net descends in your steady hands,
that arc of pursuit becomes the arc of grace—
you've made the fleeting permanent, forever caught mid-flight.

---

**WORD COUNT: 287 words** ✓