The Butterfly Project

 

A butterfly just robbed a bank.  At once

The effects are felt in Cleveland, and the jars

Of homemade pickles aging in my fridge

Advertise the consequences.  Good luck

That I was weeding frontally at the time.

Deforestation?  Maybe, but the choice

Is stash the butterflies in solitude.

Frappe´ their nectar.  Give them leafy bunks.

But do not risk Tibet on keeping straight

Your sofa cushions or the coffee mugs.

Wednesday: Theme and Variations

      This first appeared in The Chimaera.

Wednesday

Among these sparrows, frogs, and chickadees,

Finally warmed by sun instead of steam,

Too early for the shift to certainties,

Pentameter to prose, maybe I dream

Of sex and violets. Perhaps I know

What scientists on salary forecast:

This Thursday, patchy fog and early snow.

Their spring comes early, but it does not last

Forever. So I’m told. No season does

Which lies beneath the dirt today. Tomorrow

The violets will be the spring that was.

They lend me verse. Whatever else I borrow,

I offer back, as though I had a choice.

First day of spring, this is my winter voice.

Whensday

Dr Dee and his chicks, that brood who read

Fire and numbers, every comet signed,

What good are they? Their sun is not a head

Of state. Mere shape lives only in the mind,

In digs where violence dwells, sex of a kind,

Like ringing changes on these lilybells.

He knew his time, he told his time. And then?

I heard the answer. Like the heart, it tells

The count. It told the weather, but not when.

I take my time. It will be small and soon.

He only heard the pitch of notes that men

Are built to hear. I think I heard that tune

Performing here. The feeder and the grass

Bear the refrain: “A lass, my love, a lass.”

Wedsday

Nobody claims that flowers are untrue

Because they claim their pollen from the wind.

Imagine being proffered this excuse--

“It was the zephyr did it. I’m unskinned,

I’m virgin as a stone.” Of course you are.

The hyacinths immaculately flower.

They took their color from a passing star

While you were sleeping: some ungodly hour

When spring believed that nobody was watching.

Tulips push through. The grass begins to sweat.

Troo-loo the song the songbirds have been hatching:

Tra-la the song they urge us to forget.

Trust is a cycle. If we do the same,

We get it back. And no one knows its name.

Wendsday

A pilgrimage, spring having sprung, we go

The places we go every day, to see

What sun has done to change the world we know:

It starts from scratch, except for me and thee.

We are now what we have been, more and less,

Parts shed, augmented, by and large forgotten.

We can still flower—there is that, God bless--

So fertile we, so much to work with, rotten

Right to the corps. They call these zephyrs. Feel

Commotion in the ground? No? I don’t either.

From this point forward, nothing much is real—

No pilgrims, Aprille, smalle foweles neither.

Spring forward. Fall back. Either way we stand

Right where we are, not sky, not wholly land.

A Tide In Their Affairs

 

I checked the tub for tides. The ducky rode
Bravely as ever, jake a duck as Drake.
Clearly the surface, clear of Spaniards, sent
A message to all pirates, blackguards: Make
Your bones in other bathrooms, the abode
Of breeds without the law. They pitch a tent
On bathmats, oilcloth, on a naked floor.
I scuppered them. Here you will find no more

Than Ivory, almost completely pure.
The tub was calm. And yet the drain was waiting
To suck and spiral all that came away.
Calm is a fury, still anticipating
The quack of terror. What poor ducks endure
To save the surface, even for a day.

Ripe For Recruitment

 

Under the bridges, then, where can be found

Men lost, bootless, unready hands on fire
And hair they use as lockpicks. Or The Last
Piazza, where the contract killers meet
Their lawyers, to insert a venue clause
And limits on assignability.
Down by the tracks, it's far too popular,
Crowded with scads of housewife-realtors
Who need time off for Botox and mojitos.
The Polo Club will take an application,
But not call back. And Kitty's 24
Prefers you dazed, emetic but aroused.
Or there's the crossroads. Sandwiches and smokes
Purchase apparent assent. Fruition is
Another matter: these are not the deans
Of Mayhem College; often they forget
Objectives, falling asleep on wiry doormats
Stamped with cardinals and black-capped chickadees,
Right at their victim's feet. Such tasseled shoes.
Nothing says loving like a drunken bum
Sprawled at the doorstep, hunting knife in hand,
Asking, if kicked, for dollar bills and beer.
Try beneath bridges. Covered in newsprint there,
Soldiers with stories, drumheads fast asleep,
Forage for excess, settle for skinny sweets.

Bardolatry

 

There at the Federal Courthouse they love Shakespeare.

They quote him often, and they quote him wrong.

“The quality of mercy is not stained,”

A PD said. “This kingdom is no horse,”

A prosecutor pled. “In every hamlet

They know the great clichés.” I have an itch

To stand and rectify, but I do not,

Suspecting that the local lockup holds

Good friends to friends of bards. The judge looks down,

His lifetime tenure harbored in his gut,

And quotes, “Victims have died. Why, even worms

May have their day and turn. But not for love.”

It’s hard to argue with a thought like that.

I don’t know any worms who disagree.

Decomposition

 

Scraping away their sod, you find--

The time-intoxicated dirt,
Rich in polysyllabic orts
And nutrients, like red roe deer
And tallow chandlers--roots and bones.
We have those here. Around a shrew's
Skull you can see the withy threads
Of something growing somewhere else.
Our soil is fed by little songs
Of composition: Here lies one
Whose name was never writ at all,
Genius and species, gone to seed.