Butterfly Net
Searching for a notion, an idea
To capture in my butterfly net,
Eluding the hunter
With weightlessness,
Form like smoke
Or haze on a summer’s day.
Like an eel swimming underwater,
Avoiding the rod’s cast and reward
By burrowing into mud,
Obscuring, hiding, disguising
Itself; turning into circles
Within circles, ripples.
But then sunshine overhead
Sharpens my view,
Vision arising, lit with tone
And form and shape:
I write and write
As the salmon leaps from the deep.
Perhaps it is catching insects
Or glorying in exertion,
Afraid I’ll turn again
To the butterfly net
And write about a
Red Admiral instead.
There is envy amongst thoughts:
They compete for space in my mind
As I search for a sentence, a phrase
That is unknowable, immutable;
Like a butterfly in flight,
It will not be pinned to the page.
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