Abiding Beauty

Abiding Beauty By Dane Smith-Jonsen Above the fern at the forest's edge, a butterfly gracefully glides. Beautiful yellow flittering near tastes the sugary buttercup. Flashing sulphur wings, happily spreading, upon a placid breeze rides. The wild flower bed will not subside as the beauty drifts up and up. Long slender wings black with light stripes, zebra longwings come hovering. Sight! Seemingly weak, suspended in air, they waft between passion vine blooms. Family ties. Who would realize? Communally sleeping at night. Seven, eight, no, eleven there were hovering beneath the new moon. Dipping, floating, skipping in the breeze, viceroys mimicking regal lines. Willow branches and cherry trees, disguised, chrysalis covered with leaves. Colorful viceroys mimic. Hiding in willows they will sleep and dine. Majestic, monarchs on milkweed feast; then, migrate to Mexico’s trees Beautiful red-spotted purple or is it a pipevine swallowtail? To grace blackjack cherries and willows that grows at the woodlands door. Flipping. Flying! Bright orange. Fritillary finds food from flowers, frail. Delightfully sips on passion vines, warming in the sun as before. Spring’s sweet trip into summer slips; too soon the butterflies will be gone. Chrysalises metamorphose on: twigs, beneath leaves, cleave to host trees. Birds fly south ‘til caterpillars emerge. Then, return to sing hunger’s song. Cycles of life! Interlocking beauty. Upon distant pasts proceeds. Human hearts, over whelmed, skip beats. And God’s beauty bestows souls’ relief. When in love’s peace and solitude, man rests in nature’s lovely abode. There is no loss of life or pain, nor hurt, that can lessen one’s belief. Abiding beauty becomes a crown when on the straight and narrow road.