Did the title tap memories of feelings so right

they moved your heart higher than a soaring kite?

Did you imagine yourself in a meadow so bright

the colors would bind you in endless delight

while wandering waterbirds dance and excite

You? Did you assume serenity would land your sight

on a monarch butterfly caught in mid-flight

while skimming and skipping over lakes so lightly,

ephemeral motion, in stillness made mightily

calm, profoundly full of meaning and insight?

 

You suppose wrong; the title’s not a typo.

 

Stepping out of the church’s front door —

in a fog of solemn sorrow and ire

after a troubling memorial service

for a troubled sister who had left me

hurt, angry, too soon, and unresolved —

I glimpsed a butterfly wing on the sidewalk

just before my next step would crush it

 

I froze in thought, “Oh, Butterfly!

Where have you gone?”

And remembered my much admired beloved sister.

I spoke to the missing piece,

“Are you still flying on one wing?”

And remembered my enigmatic, wounded sister.

 

My mind’s eye created instant poetry:

“Did some jealous god capture you

to rip your wing

from your frail body

then spirited you away

and left you forsaken

far from your wing

To seal the separation?”

And remembered my fiercely gifted sister.

 

(Oh, my sister!

No one ever – before or since –

so close to me

so far apart.)

 

All in a fleeting moment

I stooped to gather up the wing —

ignoring voices speaking comfort,

hugs seeking to console me

with joys in their memory of her.

 

Rejecting those useless cares,

while remembering them kindly.

I tucked their memories and my wing

between two pages of eulogy

and took them home with me

to wash myself in all the unshed tears

drowning me in despair.

They’re still here – the memories and the wing —

on the wooden box that holds her ashes.

 

On that otherwise empty bookshelf

The dust covers happy memories

And she (oh, butterfly!) looks so forlorn;

in my dreams she’s flying.

In her life I dreamed I could make her whole again;

she would not land long enough to let me.

 

When I saw a craft vendor tossing away

a wooden dragonfly with one wing missing,

I offered to buy it; we bargained for two:

one whole and the other I wanted.

 

I keep the dragonflies on the ashes box,

placing the butterfly wing

where the dragonfly’s is missing.

 

The dragonflies stay still.

But every now and then

the wing

moves —

Is it trying to fly? —

 

Once the wing fell and was lost

to me.

I recovered it

while dusting behind the box.

 

Sometimes I forget the whole one;

even when it’s there, I don’t see.

I allow the sight of the wounded one —

and the wing — to haunt me,

knowing the butterfly will never be whole

but hoping to one day reach

Solace and Resolution.

 

Yet,

maybe I began this wrong.

Perhaps, after all,

this will be

about finding serenity

while watching a butterfly, a wing.