Butterflies

Some days her main job seems to be

to welcome back the Red Admiral

as it lights on a leaf of the yellow

forsythia. It is her duty to stop & lean

over to take in how it folds & opens

its wings. Then, too, there is the common

Tiger Swallowtail, which seems to her

entirely uncommon in how it moves

about the boundaries of this clearing

we made so many years ago. If she leaves

the compost bucket unwashed to rescue

a single tattered wing from under the winter

jasmine or the blue flowers of the periwinkle

& then spends a whole afternoon at our round

oak table surrounded by field guides

& tea until she is sure—yes—that it belongs to

a Lorquin's Admiral, or that singular

mark is one of the great cat's eyes

of a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, then she is

simply practicing her true vocation

learning the story behind the blue beads

of the Mourning Cloak, the silver commas

of the Satyr Anglewing, the complex shades

of the Spring Azure, moving through this life

letting her sweet, light attention land

on one luminous thing after another.

 

Poem copyright ©2017 by Samuel Green, "Butterflies."