I found a square of paper, a sticky quadrilateral
a blank parallelogram, the
golden-yellow rhombus
the empty plane
of a Post-it note waiting to be
filled
I found a square of paper
discarded in the trash
its tightly compressed fibers like
golden-yellow net
I had a thought that fluttered-by,
I captured it in script
trapped between right angels, I inked
these letters there
deep
and blue with India ink
I thought of Nabokov, a man in
love with butterflies
more than he was with the prose
and poetry he wrote
he filled volumes marking the
subtle variegations
the micro-changes in coloration of
a butterfly’s wings
the patterns denoting their
migrations, spending
more words on these than he ever did
on poetry and fiction
as a boy I was told to be careful
with butterflies
believing that the barest touch
could brush the “magic-dust”
from their wings, leaving them moribund
and flightless
a butterfly is
pixie-like…floating, flying, gravity defying
Barrie showed us how with a
sprinkle of pixie dust (and a laugh)
the heroine Wendy took flight, and
took-up arms against old Hook
a pirate panicked by the tick-tock
of a clock, the passing of time
Wendy leapt wingless into the sky on
clouds of pixie-dust
Soaring through the ether with a pipe-playing-boy-god
a Titan named Pan
all butterflies bear the image of
the horned-god…dancing in the wind
goat-footed Pan—god of wild
places, timeless mad Pan—god of loneliness
shock and feral desire…traits all
boys are taught to temper
lest they become
lost in their inner child
untamed and wild
Nabokov loved butterflies and the
metamorphosis of a worm
to witness beauty emerging from
the silky creche of the chrysalis
he loved the tragedian, the anti-hero
and the tragedy itself
he wrote of the old, the aging and
corrupt, of youth and lament
capturing in his pages, like a
poem on a Post-It
the fragile nature of longing,
delicate as a butterfly…that once acquired
lives but a few
moments before it expires
