A butterfly is never old or strong.
She greets the world as worm upon a leaf,
and inches through beginning in the long
phase of herself: a fuzzy garden thief.
She rests awhile cased in her cocoon,
suspended senseless while she sprouts a wing
bedusted with the pattern that will soon
promote her as a banner of the spring.

We say that she’s a symbol of the soul,
but she’s too busy breeding her delight
to be affected by semantic role
or simplified to serve our blinkered sight.
She’s insect first and thoughtless – at her core
a butterfly’s nobody’s metaphor.