Where Have the Butterflies Gone?

Where have the butterflies gone?
Were they spun off into tomorrow?
Were they swallowed by the dawn,
As the sky turned bright and yellow?
Were they lost behind a cloud?
Were they called to dress the dead?
A quivering, golden, shroud,
Sewn of gilded, fragile thread.
Were they just too much of a cliché,
Too happy, bright and brief,
Dissolved into the salt sea spray
A platitude of blissed relief?
Did they all go out against the moon
With a spatting, sizzling sound?
Were they gathered in a word balloon?
Were they found to be profound?
Did the faeries just flat wear them out
In a rodeo of wings?
Were they supped up by a hungry trout
Whose belly now flutters and sings?
Where have the butterflies disappeared?
Did you even know they were gone?
Or is it just as I always feared . . .
You greet this news with a yawn
“What use were butterflies anyway?
Just a vaporous moment of wings
So the world’s grown a little grey . . .
One becomes accustomed to things”


©Edwina Peterson Cross

(With a nod of the head to Believer, who wondered)