Butterflies are gentle things
with beautiful and graceful wings,
their secret untold until wings unfold.
Butterfly
Like a poem, the butterfly
is nabbed by the net
at the delicious, delicate,
moment of flight.
Hither to thither, spiraling free,
then jarred up tight in a fluttering fright.
Stilled in life,
pinned in glass case.
A moment of time,
stilled and pinned tight,
and captured there,
in the stillness,
the Poem's cause.
All time, before time,
between time, befall.
Time in a glass capsule;
distilled essence of moment;
stretched and patterned wing;
jewelled eye dimmed.
Motif for the eggs, glistening
peals in leafy sunlight.
For the grubs,
blindly reaching,
blindly eating.
For the Forest
and the warm summer trees,
where the primeval perfumes weave.
And the grass that seeded;
the bird that dived,
but could not catch
that which the hand of man brought,
fluttering, trembling, interrupted life,
through summer wood and buttercup meadow,
to the dark place, dread place,
hid from the sun,
where this silent,
unnatural violence was done.
A butterfly in a glass case,
like the Poem,
distillation of timeless instant,
a colour, a theme.
With meagre, mute inference, tells full tale
of fleet pleasure and sorrow;
of wings on the sail.
Now trapped in an immortality,
unwelcome, unsought.
Like the Poem,
A butterfly never intends to be caught.
Virgo
