Butterfly

Feeling breathless
Sweet air fills my lungs
and makes me dizzy as
I race after.
The butterfly bobs on invisible crests of wind.

In the gold spectacled trees with blackened bark
fresh from an early morning shower?
By the swaying stalks of grass and wild flowers
that keep time to a fond old song?
In the paper blue sky that comforts us from the
blackness? I spin around and around, drunk on the
drippings of honeysuckle in the air.

Ah.
Swirling. Fluttering. Disappearing in between
the hard midday shadows and swaying luminescent
green hands of an oak tree.

Intricate webs and loops on his wings stretched
like raindrops in the wind.
Yellow and maroon glow like a specter in the
night. The stained glassed windows of the outdoor
cathedral. He dances by my fingertips. Free.

As he waves his painted canvases up and down,
against the splashes of wind,
I imagine his smudged wings between my fingers,
smeared with his sparkling grey magic.
His silent scream rails me like a tidal wave
sending me over the cliffs from paradise.

I follow the butterfly's cascading flight of
freedom toward the flossy green meadow where it
meets with another.
They flutter together playfully as I marvel at
the pure blue sky.