it is now
the butterflies come
winging their chocolate edges
through the halfmist

rustling the heights
with feathered wing and silent angel
whisperings they dance
their gold through needles of pine

massing in the grove as the sun
sinks and the waterfed moon
rolls back the night
each year it is so

the ritual
of silence brushing the ear
brown velvet opening
the corner of dreams

the shy eyes of a new moon,
the face of a woman or crone,
a singular chorus -
frogs who haunt the midnight
stars,
sounds strung like petals
across the world,
beneath the turning
smoky restless dripping forests
astir after the February rains -
of us all.

We are grand madnesses in
a similar corridor
daring to sling
words across the miles,
bringing metaphor and image
to life, a phrase to keep us alive,

taunting us with possible freshness
if it hits our daimon and
meaning seeps through our pens,
it is an impress of
anonymous refreshment
stirring the fingers to write,
calling up voices to read about
unanticipated beauty, like
the shock of an open face in a circle
of eyes, the hunger for juice.

There is a wolf in that woman,
and she wants to hear the poem
again. She craves the magic
none of us can see, and because
of that, Words
fly from my hands like
startled birds,
ranging the unridden edge high
above the overhanging precipice of
underwritten wishes
in the cafe,

silent
except for a song with mute lyrics
that roles across the tables like dice.

© 1997 by Karla Andersdatter
in The Butterfly Chronicles