• The Butterfly Keeper


    I. Dust (April 2nd, 1992)


    Three butterflies arranged by size and I
    looked up to where they perched on the side table;
    little winged gods glued to a corkwood branch, trapped
    in a prison of plastic and metal, stamped in gold
    a cardboard base and backing.

    The house was dry
    like camouflage and pear; walls
    an autumn canopy,
    degree of death dependant on the dusting.
    Crawling in the carpet like a tick
    I felt the rise and fall of floorboards
    hidden under thick blades
    of grass in olive drab.
    Curtains drawn, no lights to stir
    the air, dyed mausolea-green.

    Leona's face, more distant than the butterflies’,
    a blur of slowly moving lips
    and wisps of hair as white as hospital sheets,
    floated somewhere in the space above
    her hands, thin as needles, trailing
    green veins veiled by lucent skin.
    Pianist fingers, warped into garden spades
    dug in the air over my head, fluttered
    like butterflies’ wings.

    “But don’t touch them,” she murmured.
    “Don’t touch.”

    Very fragile.



    II. Eyespots (October 3rd, 1996)


    Mother, nine months fat, coughing
    on the couch, turns in her sleep.
    A walker, slouching toward bathroom
    to be—stops. Lace-white woman,
    bones shaking as she reaches
    to open the plywood door on abyss-
    blackness; unlit closet—chamber of treasures.
    “Bring a chair,” Leona murmurs, not looking back
    to see if I am following her down.

    She pulls them from the darkness
    like a goddess making worlds
    from Chaos and Old Night;
    a disembodied voice, a limp hand
    forming the sun. “Let there be…”
    Motioning—slow, as if time no longer
    worries her—for me to stand
    on the chair I dragged behind.

    She pulls them from the darkness:
    three butterflies on a corkwood branch,
    and cups them in her phalanx fingers.
    “You love these.” Not a question.
    “I want you to have them.”
    Doesn’t need an answer.

    Standing for the first time
    at her height, I see
    a woman real;
    her gaze pits
    of mausolea-green, a field
    of white and shadows, wrinkles
    like the perfect symmetry
    of black on a butterfly’s wings.

    Just a splash of faded color,
    a dissuading disguise; two spots
    for eyes, buried
    in a sea of dust and flesh.

    I can’t look away from her face—
    flapping open and closed, closed—
    as she presses her last will into my palms.

    “Have them.”



    III. Ash (October 12th, 1996)


    Cloud-light painted the manicured lawn
    in serpentinite lacquer
    and the measured rows of women—
    curling black veils pinned in their hair—
    swayed as one to an insubstantial breeze:
    Van Gogh’s Irises in a shade of Superstition.

    I saw my mother and her mother
    and her mother’s mother: a gold-plated box
    carried like a litter, Ark of the Covenant,
    shrouded for eternity.
    Mother, grandmother, great grandmother.
    Three butterflies in a row, grey
    and fragile, millions of scales
    as soft and small as flakes of ash.

    Three women arranged by age and I
    shored them up in my hands;
    a little cage of fingers, a mason jar
    clear as tears.

    “Have them.”

    And my mother
    and grandmother, drinking
    the scent of funeral flowers,
    gave me their hands
    to glue them to the earth
    while one fluttered on
    toward Heaven.

    That night,
    thinking of the winter ahead,
    six months—feet—deep,
    as the butterfly keeper, I
    wrapped the metal and plastic box,
    the corkwood and cardboard garden,
    in brown package paper.


    Three butterflies, one by one,
    crawled back into their chrysalis,
    waiting
    for a new spring.