Why

Who would believe in butterflies

If he or she had never seen them?

These fluttering things with painted wings

That stagger through the sky.

There’s something arresting about a butterfly,

Something, at once, so cosmically comical,

And yet, impendingly beautiful.

And while I stop to watch it, I see,

That the foundation of time is cracking beneath me.

I can’t see every flutter of the wings.

There are missing chunks of time,

And mysteriously, and suddenly, 

The butterfly has disappeared.

And when did I grow this white beard?

I was once a very young girl,

And now I am

A very old man who knows

That truly nothing can be known or understood,

Nothing bad, or nothing good,

That can not be answered by the feeling one receives 

When one sees the painted wings emerge

From the dark green leaves and swagger off pitifully into another spring.

The alluring “Why?”

The seductive “Because,”

Butterflies exist.

-jenn