The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain.
"One of the Butterflies" by W. S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius. ©
Copper Canyon Press, 2008
Butterflies ,so fragile,evanescent flittering images of flickering gossamer color.Flowers would and could not be ,if it were not for butterflies. And I believe we would and could not exist without the fleeting, transitory moments of beauty that we can not capture,yet remain fixed in our memory. Butterflies would not be butterflies if they stayed too long in one place and perhaps they would become less beautiful to us as well.I met this pair of lovely monarchs while taking a walk this summer at a village garden nearby to my work.
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain.
Copper Canyon Press, 2008
Butterflies ,so fragile,evanescent flittering images of flickering gossamer color.Flowers would and could not be ,if it were not for butterflies. And I believe we would and could not exist without the fleeting, transitory moments of beauty that we can not capture,yet remain fixed in our memory. Butterflies would not be butterflies if they stayed too long in one place and perhaps they would become less beautiful to us as well.I met this pair of lovely monarchs while taking a walk this summer at a village garden nearby to my work.
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