It rained for 3 days,
drenching torrents plunged down
as if a dam had breached.
There was some local flooding
but by and large only minor damage
a lot of litter and flotsam though
‘sky wreckage’ some called it.
The butterfly house was swamped,
its netted walls were ripped ragged
by broken tree limbs,
the seams in the wooden roof
split apart and a wild,
wind-riding rain rode in.
Purple Admirals were beaten down
by the gusting blows,
then drowned.
Painted Ladies were murdered
their mangled decorative forms
no longer cosmetics.
Longwings no longer flew
but in death, swam limply
in the splashing puddles.
A disarray of broken wings
carpeted the deluged floor.
Somewhere in this caged house
sodden chrysalids sway upon fractured twigs;
eventually there will be fluttering wings,
but not here in this ruined shelter
were the air still drips wetly
onto unreceiving
and unmoving antennae.
Categories:
chrysalids, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Wings in puddles.
There must have been a leak,
and in the sky nothing fly’s
but a crippled gale,
it limps now, yet howls still
from the far side of lost town.
Wind-drones moan in bare trees
sky wreckage litters.
Dead Purple Admirals
have gone down in rainy heaps.
Painted Ladies rest forever.
Longwings no longer sail,
for the roaming Yellow Swallow Tail
It is trails end.
Who broke the netting and the roof?
What dashed all
upon a fluttering flood?
Was it the piratical gulls?
No, like this emptying daylight
they have been flung into hiding.
Somewhere in this arboretum
new chrysalids sway on twigs,
soon there will be wings,
but not here in this ruined shelter
wear the air drips wetly
as if with tears.
Categories:
chrysalids, poetry,
Form: Free verse