WINGS
Sitting on a lawn chair, October afternoon,
sun pouring down its warm thick honey,
late flowers—sweet alyssum, scarlet flax,
blue cornflowers, golden poppies—
still blooming for all they're worth,
before frost puts an end to this exuberance.
Small pale butterflies jitter across the lawn,
summer's last waltz, under the hard blue sky,
and I try to follow their loopy, elliptical
wanderings, the way my own life has gone
down roads I never thought I'd travel.
In the far hills, trees are turning
slowly golden, and birds collect
on telephone wires.
A breeze rises, brushes my cheek,
almost as if a cold white wing
just passed by.
by Barbara Crooker
How often when I stop to look at something in nature that appears to be quite ordinary,
does it become,
on closer inspection, extraordinary --
reason enough, I've decided,
to pause and let nature come to me rather than continually pursue it.
To sit and be brushed by a butterfly's wings is not an experience to disdain.
~from Appalachian Spring
by Michael Frayn
Poetry is an orphan of silence.
The words never quite equal
the experience behind them.
We are always at the beginning,
eternal apprentices.
— Charles Simic
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