Papillons

The bed is a pristine cocoon for this slumbering butterfly.
She dreams of flooding her burgeoning wings
Over dew-laden petals of columbine and honeysuckle.
In her floral haze she laps up the honeyed sap
that the blossoms drizzle in their trembling
haste to feel the iridescent light.
Filtered through her gossamer arms,
the light murmurs as it grazes their velvet centers
with ruby, sapphire and emerald glow.
My mother loved the butterflies in her garden,
swooping and diving into the chrysanthemums,
but they never dreamed.
Summer afternoons would leave us speechless
like a cluster of perch wheezing and squirming
on the prickly lawn, dreaming of liquid revival
but with spade in hand, she would squat in the crackling dirt
and croon to the gasping flowers.
She would sing her Beatles to the butterflies.
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on
was her gardening bible verse, her whispered wisdom
to the fragile bleeding hearts, lying comatose in the shade.
Under the scorching rays of a diminishing childhood
our dreams of milk and honeysuckle
wilted into mulch for earthworms to wriggle over.
We were drowning in crabapple blossoms
drifting down from the uninspired trees
in our safe corner of the world.
We grew tulips from our hair and paraded
along the sable rooftops in our reverie.
If I ever hope to fly I must paint delicate
watercolor patterns on my forearms that echo
the dreams of the embryo, sleeping in her forgotten chrysalis.
Les reves des papillons sont passagers--
The flower buds groan and droop their ripening heads
clinging to illusions of gemstone feather wings
swathed in a stiff, oppressive cradle of silk.