Like an autumnal shower of brilliant leaves,
butterflies float in a lush conservatory garden.
A winged emissary rests and caresses my hand,
wonder and quiet joy.
To the Celts they were renewal and transformation,
emissaries of the eternal
clothed in gossamer wings.
I remember the burly man with great metal claws
As he toted a huge diamond into the kitchen,
a chunk of ice for the box.
It glowed like a crystal chandelier,
but froze my small probing fingers.
Small items were on the top shelf,
A buttery slab, ruby hued strawberries, a lone ear of corn.
Sparkling glass bottles of milk with cream on top
filled the lower shelf.
They looked like snowy penguins
huddled by an Arctic sea.
The bottles felt as smooth and cold as polished stones
in a gushing stream.
In the summer I loved to touch their smooth coolness
and sip the creamy delight,
a taboo so delicious to breach
and not get caught!
Swallows streaking in and out through the row of broken
panes over the front door went on with their conversation
of afterthoughts whatever they had been settling
about early summer and nests and the late daylight
and the long-disused dwellings of swallows in the beams
let their dust fall from them as I brought in my bed
while the door stood open onto the stone sill smoothed to water
by the feet of others never known to me and when I
turned and looked back I did not recognize a thing
the sound of flying whirred past me a voice called far away
the swallows grew still and bats came out light as breath
around the stranger by himself in the echoes
what did I have to do with anything I could remember
all I did not know went on beginning around me
I had thought it was what would come later but it had been waiting.
Endnote: A lovely poem about early summer by Bill Merwin, our new poet laureate in the U.S.
