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David Selzer is a writer of poetry, prose fiction, screenplays and stage plays. He embraces digital platforms to share his work of more than fifty years… READ MORE
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ON THE NATURE OF BUTTERFLIES
Before I even enter the room I hear
the fluttering of tiny gossamer wings.
A butterfly appears to be hoping
that the window glass, at some point, will become
empty air. I fetch a tumbler, and place it
cautiously over the creature, which stills
as I lift it away and cover the top
with my palm. I can see now the butterfly
is a Painted Lady – that ubiquitous
migrant from North Africa – with its
variegated wings of black, brown, ochre,
olive and red, the subtlest of dazzles.
As if it were a primed grenade or rare,
exquisite crystal I carry the tumbler
circumspectly to the balcony.
The butterfly flies up, out, and not,
as I would have anticipated, hoped,
over jagged rocks and ragged seaweed
towards the meticulous horizon
across the bay – where a white hulled ketch
is anchoring, its starboard light pale
in the falling dusk – but back, over the roof,
where, out of sight, beyond a dry stone wall,
a wild bank rises of rosebay willowherb,
convolvulus and bracken, effulgent
beneath darkening sycamores and oaks.
2 responses to “ON THE NATURE OF BUTTERFLIES”
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Made me pause. Where does freedom call? A poignant stretch between the clear horizon and the welcoming undergrowth..
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The first thing I want to say is that this is just delightful, David. Its apparent simplicity is beguiling. After a series of mostly straightforward sentences, the poem reaches its conclusion by way of several beautifully managed syntactical suspensions. First, “and not” sets up the long-to-be-delayed fulfilment which will come six lines later with the responding “but”. Next, “as I would have anticipated” is immediately modified by “hoped”. Then, my attention is detoured out in a panoramic sweep above rocks and seaweed towards the “meticulous horizon”. There the lovely description of the ketch absorbs more of my attention. (Is it fanciful to suggest that the ketch is a kind of butterfly, occupying, as it were, the place in the scene to which your initial hope might have consigned the Painted Lady? By the way, Painted Lady would make a good name for a ketch.) At last with “but” it seems the resolution has begun – only for it to be delayed yet again by “back, over the roof, / where, out of sight, beyond a dry stone wall” (whose imagined details parallel the view over the bay). Finally, with the “wild bank” it seems the pay-off is indeed at hand; but in fact the long sentence runs on further still as the various plants are listed before the whole poem concludes in an adjectival phrase of quiet crepuscular tenderness.
I am struck by “meticulous”, the only word in these eleven closing lines (apart from “effulgent”) whose register gives it prominence against the relatively plain diction of the rest. Am I to sense its deep etymological roots in the Latin words metus (dread) and periculosus (dangerous)? Dangerous marine distances might well inspire dread in regard to your migrating butterfly.
Last of all, I like the touch of magic in the echo I think I hear three lines from the end of a famous speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
One other thought… The poem opens with you imagining what you cannot see but deduce from the butterfly’s pattering sound. It ends with you imagining what you cannot see (but know is there) – the rosebay willowherb, convolvulus and bracken out of sight behind the house: an appealing symmetry.
Masterly, David!
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