Messenger

The butterfly's wings were more complex
than an embroidered lampshade for the Empress.
It opened and closed them like applause.
It was obsessed

with a dessicated lump of dogshit, it
fluttered and hovered and would not let go, the way--
oh, stop this metaphor.   It was feeding, that's all.

I was sad because my lover had left.
Ruth was saying all the perfect, useless things.

My mother was still alive in snowbound Massachusetts.
A part of me thought she'd hang on forever,
making slurred phone calls from her wheelchair,
and struggling to get the towels lined up straight.   
It's not like my father and sister didn't

try to warn me.  It's just that we can't believe
what we don't see in front of us.
Unfolding green chenille of the far hills.

I could have gazed forever at this butterfly, the gorgeousness
of its rapt attention to dirt,
how it struggled
for one day's worth of nourishment.

There were dizzying spaces
where the hills dropped away that made me want to leap
out into the void.
Sun stretched its fringey springtime parasol.
Turkey vultures dipped and circled,   
and I had to admit I was happy
in spite of it all.  We didn't know

my mother would die the next week,
or where the too-early butterfly had come from.
The depth of our ignorance was splendid,

and the message was not in code.   
Because everything
everything!  comes flying or fluttering or crashing
toward us with its own illogical beauty,
its already-torn wings.