The Butterfly

It became everything to me after

I watched its pattern,

which told a story of a draft, here, between two

openings, making tiny sounds

that add up to laughter, a held breath, an idea of color

trapped against the pane then fluttering open here and there

blues and yellows that would break in your hands,

its wings trying to find corners

and desparate to escape some point of view

you could almost hear a click of a lock being tried as it blinked

in and out of the sun pressing through the room

like interrogation light that day,

near the very end of my childhood,

the velvet armrest at my fingers,

a dollar bill in my hand,

wanting to be narrowed, rescued into a story again, a transparency

floating I watched all afternoon, held up by the invisible

fundamental uncreated essence of each

minute to each minute graduating slowly from the symbolic

to the beautiful reddish gold light bathing the walls

toward the end of the season,

the flash on its wings; I found the path it took,

I saw the different weight of things,

flowerpots broken scissors

on the table gold-speck formica the sink, the air

all around them neither full nor empty, but holding them

untouched, untransformed, something the day must cross,

one form at a time,

in order to start right again

from dark, only to reappear a little further on

as the last pool of light on my father’s plate in the kitchen,

the wind in the hair of his shadow

in the room leaned against the fridge, wanting to be

free, the point of view darting, fluttering, sucked out

by a doorful of sky

when Dad unclasped the clasp

and called my name to the surface

of the surface and the air carried me out of what ceases

into what is ceasing outside, the houses

and trees there trying

to bury half of themselves

in shadow, where the underneath is pointed

and its tip shows through

I lay down on the lawn in the heart of sprinklers

and looked up,

and couldn’t seem to find it—