like butterflies

LIKE BUTTERFLIES

When I pick you up at the airport
your voice is tinged with sadness.
Butterflies, you say, only live
for two weeks.

Two weeks--you're bummed
that something so fantastically
beautiful

could vanish from this earth
so suddenly.

Outside the lavafields in Oregon
baby monarchs swarm the highway,
heartbreakingly
dashing into windshields and bumpers,
as they test erratic wings.

And somewhere tropical, an exquisite
purple hair-streaked thecla
lands on a giant leaf

for the very last time, wingtips
exhausted yet still tufted
as a violet lynx.

Like angels and Icarus,
the Blind Melon boy, himself a butterfly,
and keeper of our bee-girl joy,
couldn't keep his cheeks dry that day,
flying too close to the sun
of his unbelievable pain.

Later that week, I find a card
magically painted with a lion
surrounded by blue butterflies.

I recall listening to Eddie in Italy,
telling the crowd in his velvety roar
how we made him feel like a lion.

How when he sings
"hearts and thoughts they fade away"
we cling to what remains, the raw
reverberations of twilight tipped
to the color of wings.