Swallowtail - by Glenda Cotter
Perhaps it does not matter
whether a great yellow flap
of a swallowtail butterfly
has floated through
all the summers
of my life;
perhaps it only matters
that I think it is so,
that each time it
drifts through a blue drenched day
I am wafted on its wings
back into childhood
and all the room
I had to grow;
or carried hopefully
toward the future,
happy in the thought
of the butterflies
to come
Or simply centered
in this day, this good
and beautiful day
when a single
aimless butterfly
gave a simple direction
to gather the present.
