Somewhere, swallowtails

A half-second, maybe.
No more.

You hang in the air,
a question too pretty to
diminish with answers, wings

opening and closing on
the hinge of your thorax,

bright lemon and black;
cyan patches,
splashes of orange.

Black, too, those perfect
points, limned in light.

A half-second to see you;
a half-second — no more —
to know a swallowtail,

like those you find
puddling in muddy shallows,
brightening the drab earth.

And then the windshield.

How readily life dispatches beauty.

Your small body, dispersed,
contains so much loss:

the dying child,
the squandered love,
the truncated promise.

(Time erodes what violence overlooks.)
.
What can we say of carnage?

Confess our complicity.
Protest our innocence.
State the one true thing:
how little we know.

Somewhere, swallowtails
are puddling in muddy shallows,
brightening the drab earth,

wings gently undulating,
questions too pretty
to diminish
with answers.

 

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Tags: butterflies, creative writing, grief, insects, loss, love, poem, poetry, relationships, spirituality, swallowtail