I'm crazy about this poem by Mary Oliver, from her collection called "West Wind" (1997). In fact, I'm crazy about butterflies in general. Everything seems to be undergoing metamorphosis right now. My sons eat like caterpillars, cocoon, and burst forth with brightly colored wings every day.
On this day, the autumn equinox, we pose teetering between the seasons, day and night the same length, before we slide irrisistibly toward winter. My husband and I celebrated the equinox by buying plants at Flowercraft. While we were digging a spot for the raised bed frame, two white butterflies fluttered over and around us and on our grapevines. The photo is of a Cabbage White tasting the Mexican sage in front of our house.
Seven White Butterflies
Seven white butterflies
delicate in a hurry look
how they bang the pages
of their wings as they fly
to the fields of mustard yellow
and orange and plain
gold all eternity
is in the moment this is what
Blake said Whitman said such
wisdom in the agitated
motions of the mind seven
dancers floating
even as worms toward
paradise see how they banter
and riot and rise
to the trees flutter
lob their white bodies into
the invisible wind weightless
lacy willing
to deliver themselves unto
the universe now each settles
down on a yellow thumb on a
brassy stem now
all seven are rapidly sipping
from the golden towers who
would have thought it could be so easy?
--Mary Oliver
2 comments:
Daphne,
You inspire me, and I so enjoy your reflections on and interest in nature. This poem reminds me of an Emily Dickinson poem about a butterfly. Visit http://www.tonner.org/reflections/butterflies.html to see a lovely presentation of it.
Thanks, Marmee. I know a lot of Emily Dickinson's nature poetry, but I didn't know that one. What a lovely poem! The Mary Oliver poem seems almost a response to it. There is something transfixing about the movement of butterflies.
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