Butterfly:
strange, and it might be true
as you fly over
rosemary, and forget-me-not blue
that you vaguely recall
your grub-life grief
laboriously
crawling on a dangerous leaf?
Do you remember, then
freedom from the soil?
your joyful flight from the
wearisome toil?
Then from chrysalis limbo
cocooned against strife
do you know you've transmuted to
etherial life?
Maybe like you I
will one day have wings
and shed my old body and its
arrows and slings.
Will I
rise up anew; fly
higher than the sky?
Where gravity is no more;
and know the answer to: why?
(Patty Lafferty died yesterday at the age of 87, having been disabled for many years. This poem is one of the last she wrote, and reflects her increasing disability. I publish it in her memory)
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