Walking with a Dead Butterfly

Come fly away now gentle butterfly

Open your wings and capture a breath of wind

Set sail and say goodbye to the world below

Let not your heart in pain deny

Your right to sail the summer sky

For you are special, my valiant friend

You’ve come so far in life in so few days

And changed your coat of moldy gray

To joyfully spread rainbow colors in patterns rich

While sharing your beauty in wild, tumultuous flight

So short your life has come and gone

Come dance with me as I watch you twist and spin

Until your energy has been spent and you start to fail and fall

As you struggle with the pending doorway of death

No matter where you could have landed in the end

You somehow fell to earth beside the path

That I was silently walking there upon.

Clay Pots

How like shattered clay pots

They were when seen from close at hand

Clay pots fresh from the kiln that day

Broken when each mold was cast upon the cold

That lingered where the air was fresh and clean

And seen from heights where eagles dare soared

When they were sudden sent away amid the roar

Of surf spray that clutched the hand of sand

And layered about in nameless lots

Slowly became a collection of shrinking tired dots

Spread loosely upon the blue above the fading land

There floated they then above the heavy depth of sea

In all their fractured banquet were then to death led and bled

When thought the world had set them free

Above the green and sleeping spaces where Sightless watchers looked and not one was really seen