A Question of Belief

I’ve wondered since I was a child
Where butterflies go when they die
Thinking someplace of peace not wild
Softly floating in the whim
Of a breeze not tearing leaf or wing

The old cigar box where I kept a collection
When I was nine with pin and wing in place
A callus lack I can’t believe was me
Closed that box and left it in the attic free

Until I returned up ladder to the loft
Afraid of what I’d find or what the cost
to find ten pins gathering dust in gleam
No fragrance of spring or wing remained

And then today as if in answer to my question
Long ago asked to some one up in heaven
Where have they gone all color muted frail
when I had placed them so carefully in this cardboard jail

Today

On the front steps of a house in different town
A wing and then another had fallen down
No body held together the colors mighty chorus
But it seems like they were sent this day
with a definite purpose

The question asked so long ago must finally be
That given time an answer comes eventually

I’m saving them the wings like time
With feathers I have many now
Perhaps to test the strength of fragile things
Or more certainly to bless this heart of mine

Searching For the Wand

I see the open door, come two, come four, the dry dirt holds its tender cover
where leaves all color and blushful
dot the floor.
Thatched with muscle from the pine, I pull the plug on holding back
and cuddle up within me,
a tree so high
my sky is colored green,
and under me a bed too soft to lay my head is for dancing instead.

(Dare I ignite the muffled laughter
of the critters all scurry run beneath me?
After all, I’m standing on their pine needle rafters.)
One after another day, (should I weep?)
as the fabric not tatted falls around my feet?
No downpour from this leak can awaken youth;
yet, I see another truth.

Ardor in blood is born
and I am torn; each piece must consider how the wind sweeps the needle’s path onto a canvas without brush or paint, knowing that nothing lasts....or does it?

Something wild and wet in loving
can be made fertile again by mulching;
to faint upon a ground so considerate merits knowing who held the wand
that wonder made it
and also tracked the lines across my face and with one finger traced the fragile lace.