Butterfly Lessons

One of my earliest life-lesson pieces, written in a quieter voice than most of the collection. I’ve outgrown parts of it, perhaps, but not the truth in its wings.

There’s nothing about the caterpillar
that tells you what’s to come.
That it will morph into a butterfly
in the warmth of a summer sun.
The humble, tiny butterfly,
exemplar of innocent pleasure
raises little more than a smile for most
yet plays havoc with the weather!
It’s said those silent, gentle wing beats, ,
influence the climate;
one flutter in my garden
raising storms across the planet.

“Just living,” says the butterfly,
“Is simply never enough,
one must also have some sunshine,
a flower; freedom and love.”

Love, (like the butterfly),
goes where it pleases and
pleases where it goes;
flies gently with the breezes,
sips quietly from the rose.
Hold on to love (or a butterfly)
– just a little bit too tight
and you’ll squeeze everything from it,
including its life.
And if you clutch it loosely,
your demeanour cool and blase,
then your love (and the butterfly)
will soon flutter by and away.

Hold it’s beauty with care and strength
reflect when you’re alone
on the stages love, and it, must go through
before all they have is shown.

As I butterfly my way through angst and being
there are things I’ve learned while listening and seeing.
About netting butterfly moments
before they’re forgotten,
before the passion has worn,
before hope itself has gone.
Those butterfly moments I net with words.
and form into poems such as this, absurd
maybe, but they ensnare my careless reveries,
shape them, sculpt them, set them free.

And so we flutter through experience and change
with much to excite and enthrall…
The challenge, it seems, is to get so big
as to see and to know all.
Yet, as I wonder and watch the egos
scrambling higher and higher up the wall
I’ll sit here and watch the butterflies
and recall what it is, to be small.