Butterfly Fables

I.
There is a myth of man that states
that nymphfly wings can bring you down.
they're dusted with a tainted taste
that turns your insides round.

But rumbling boys bound through the rough
all find that still and sacred place
where the world does not seem half enough
to hold such light and gentle grace.

And something hard about them dies
and inside something new asserts
an innate fear of butterflies
and freckled girls in summer skirts.


II.
It comes of its own, at its own time
trickling daintily down like love's lost leaf
wings blinking to beguile the startled eye
then settling bright and fearless on your arm,
resting from the days robustious dance.

But it is a skip and skittish thing
as light as the breath of a first kiss.
and the rhythm of the day will call,
and falling windward, for a while
it pulls a weightless world within its wake.

It comes of its own, at its own time
trickling daintily down to lightly land,
memories of a love lost to the wind....


III.
At last the late spring settles in,
the rains a half a day away,
a time for strolling in the park's
sweet cherry blossomed way.
But then a bobbing barefoot girl
that's laughing in the green
with a book held high above her face
to block the sun's extreme.

She doesn't see me look, I think;
a little gaze, a glance, a slip.
She's laughing at the book I hope
and not the way I almost trip.
She is too young for reading Nietzsche,
and I'm too old to ask her why,
so I trip on down the blossomed way
swatting at the butterflies.