Wildfire

 Merril is hosting Poetics in the dVerse Poets Pub today ~ Butterflies are on her mind ~ and on ours as well. Words in color are butterfly names. 

the sky has forgotten how to be blue

it hangs above Oregon like a grief

too heavy to name

its lungs full of ash

its heart beating in a frantic rhythm

forests collapse into themselves

the cathedral of green

becomes a language of cinders

birdsong folded into silence

we search for something alive

LOOK ! butterflies

the clouded yellow finding nectar 

in flowers that insisted on returning

the orange sulphur lifting from fresh

clover like a small declaration

the mourning cloak no longer mourning

but bearing witness

we cannot unburn the forests

but we can plant, rebuild porches

trails, homes and trust 

we can plant one sapling beside another

one kindness next to another

until the land remembers itself

and perhaps the butterflies

who have always known 

how impossible transformations begin

will find us there