Butterflies

           

Sadness always goeth hand in hand with the beauty of the world                                                 

                                                                                           Thomas Kempis

 

I                                         

Nothing more glorious

than monarchs—

swirling above yellow roses

and sweetgrass,

all the lavender in bloom.

 

They come to the island

for the bright, brief light

that hovers in the dunes for weeks

and the nectar, spilling

through the mild October wind.

 

Their wings, the color

of the sun when it rises—

exactly how these creatures

make me feel.

 

II 

I plant butterfly bushes

in the narrow garden

in front of our house.

Soon the fluffy purple flowers

are drooping from thin stems,

as if they can not bear

the weight of so many blossoms.

I have to tie them back

with sticks and twine.

In September, the swallowtails

come in swarms. I bring my sons

outside to watch. This is where

I teach them how to pray.

 

III

If butterflies were people

they would be autistic—

tasting with their feet.

seeing light invisible

to the rest of us. Even

the tiny hairs covering their bodies

can taste and smell.

 

IV

My son Oliver attracts butterflies.

Once, in the garden, the monarchs came to him

and covered him as if he was a flowering plant,

and nectar was flowing from his skin.

They gathered on the fine yellow hairs

lining his arms and his tiny muscular legs.

When he opened his hands they landed on his palms.

Then he brought them into the house.

Fistful after fistful, he released butterflies

into the air, laughing and waving his hands.

Soon there were hundreds of monarchs

floating through the air like colorful bubbles.

In the evening, I found them clinging

in bright bunches to the living room curtains.

I was afraid to touch them. By morning

they let go, dropping to the floor in sad piles.

 

V

As he grew, I should have known something

was askew when Oliver would look

twenty feet across the yard and see a four-leaf clover,

walk out and pick it and bring it to me in the kitchen

with a big grin and run outside to find another one,

and then another until there were enough to fill

a paper cup with water. Soon, a bouquet of four-leaf clovers

seemed like an ordinary thing sitting out on a kitchen counter. 

 

At three, he could taste the difference

between brand names of food.

Kraft Cheese was different than Velveeta.

Aunt Jemima was not the same as Eggo.

By nursery school he could predict

the weather, especially storms.

On a cloudless day, he would announce

It’s going to rain, and he was always right.

 

Soon he couldn’t do his homework,

because the neighbor’s washing machine

was too loud or the kitchen smelled funny.

He began to walk around in circles for hours,

talking to himself, and filling blank books

with pages of a language only he could understand. 

He wrote lists of things and numbered them,

like 48 different types of cheese or all the planets

in the solar system.  He hoped the aliens would come

and rescue him from this strange place. 

He hated his life.  At age ten

he said he wanted to die.

 

He began taking clothes out of his drawers

and piling them on the bedroom floor

to make a nest.  He refused to sleep

in his bed.  Only the nest would do.

He became afraid to leave the house,

and he stopped answering the telephone.

Sometimes he went on the swing

for hours.  It calmed him. 

He was thirteen. 

 

The bigger he grew, the stranger it became.

Beneath the golden hair and huge dark eyes

that pulled people to him like magnets,

part of his mind was turning away.

It’s as if he began to leave the world.

But it happened slowly,

and we got used to it.

 

VI

Perhaps the monarchs

gathered in Oliver's hands

understood more about him

from one Indian summer afternoon

than I will know in a lifetime.

 

VII

Whenever I find a dead butterfly

I carry it home and put it in a jar

with mothballs on the bottom.

It sits on my desk like a sacred text.

Each pair of delicate dotted wings

folded neatly, silently awaiting flight.

Surrounded By Flowers, Floating In Light

 

In Memory of Margaret Kays

 

At breakfast we speak of cancer.

How the very thing that cures

can kill you, and sometimes does.    

 

Everyone has a story -

The neighbor with a brain tumor

who died of leukemia

 

caused by chemotherapy,

or the one about the staph

infection post-surgery,    

 

the grandfather who caught

pneumonia during his  last

hospital stay.  All the while,

 

a tiny orange and blue

butterfly clings to the white

wall of the dining room, wings

 

beating bravely. The hidden

source of it’s own resilience,

as mysterious as light.

 

Or air, that holds each last breath

taken, on beds where the dying

have lain for days, hovering

 

at the edges of their lives

until the light enters them.

Until that is all there is,

 

and we can only watch them

fade slowly. Late evening 

after visiting hours

 

the hospital hums to itself.

I visit the darkened rooms,

throbbing with machinery.

 

On the oncology floor

the doors are shut. Behind them,

is a kind of loneliness

 

that can’t be shared.  I enter,

carrying flowers -  sweet and

blooming, which is how I want     

 

to remember her.   Propped-up 

with white pillows, her eyes wide

and radiant, but empty

 

of flame, Margaret has tossed

the bright baseball caps and scarves.

Whatever hope she’d held, now

 

dissolving into lost hours.

Her outline already melting

like a shadow on the sheets.

 

Gasping after each word

spoken above the soft swish

of monitors and pumps,

 

she says her young son’s visits

exhaust her.  She sleeps all day

to prepare herself for him.

 

The card we made stretches

like a chain cross two walls. 

She’s never taking it down,

 

nor the picture of yellow

flowers she painted last week,

sitting up in her wheelchair

 

for almost an hour, her

son on her lap with his own

paper and paints making

 

a little house just for him

and his mom.  It is painted

blue, the color of the sky.

 

The sun blazing in the top

left corner fills half the paper

with thick yellow streaks that stop

 

just above the little house

with white trim, surrounded by

gardens, floating in light.   

 

 

                                                                                        

Illuminata

 

For Jody Novak

 

Day One

 

On the first day of chemo

unexplained gifts appear on the doormat –

lavender soap wrapped in tissue paper,

a thick bar of dark chocolate and a quartz

sparkled rock to keep you earthbound.

 

Day Two

 

Everyone must be busy today.

That’s okay. You watch patterns of sun-

light slide across your bedroom wall.

The dog sleeps on top of your bed

and watches you carefully.

 

Day Three

 

Dried leaves in a pile woven together

by spider webs on the brick steps

have no meaning.  But they hold

your attention for too long.   Sleep now,

and wait for something green to appear.

 

Day Four

 

Late last night, your sister phoned.

You don’t ask what took her so long,

because her voice is the one that answers

in dreams.  It is the flame

singing through the longest night.

 

Day Five

 

Sunflowers tied with yellow velvet ribbon

greet you when you open the front door.  

Peaches in a brown bag, a box of pastries

tied with a string, and bowl full of tomatoes.

The note is from a neighbor you hardly know.

 

Day Six

 

New copies of PEOPLE and VOGUE stacked

beneath a bottle of bright pink nail polish

the sticky note attached - “Something to do!”

“2 DVD’s that will make you LAUGH –

“Pink Panther” and “A Fish Called Wanda.”

 

Day Seven

 

After smoking the joint that was hidden

in an envelope labeled JUST IN CASE,

you look up the word grace in the dictionary.

“Thank you for the gifts,” you write,

“I feel like a Saint has visited my doorstep.”   

 

 

 

© Marjory Wentworth